The drive to increase rail freightÂ
Johnny Schute, Chief Operating Officer of the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), considers various options that can help expand the UK rail freight market Rail freight in the UK has a rich history during which it achieved significant successes. It plays a vital role in the UK economy, contributing GBP2.45 billion annually, and offers a sustainable and efficient means of transporting goods, reducing road congestion and carbon emissions.
In the fiscal year 2021/2022, rail freight carried GBP30 billion of goods. Although performance is sometimes variable, the sector has seen encouraging improvements. Data from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) shows a seven per cent increase in total freight moved from April to June 2024 when compared to the same period in 2023.
We welcome this and want to see freight grow even more. The Government has set an ambitious target to grow rail freight by at least 75 per cent by 2050, aligning with commitments in the Department for Transport's Plan for Rail and Transport Decarbonisation Plan. We fully support this target.
The carbon reduction benefits of freight are significant - it is estimated that one freight train can replace 129 heavy goods vehicles. Nor should we forget that rail freight is 20 times safer than road transport. Freight is a crucial component of the country's logistics infrastructure.
Although, under the new Labour administration, passenger rail is coming under Government control, the freight sector will remain subject to private investment. Commercially driven It can be easy to enthuse about the reduced carbon emissions that will result from a modal shift to rail freight without fully recognising the private sector issues for this sector.
One vital issue is that the use of freight is not optional. The type of freight chosen is the result of multiple commercial entities each seeking to maximise their returns in activities essential to their business. Therefore, the facilities and services that rail freight offers need to be highly competitive compared to road haulage.
This emphasises the pressing need for high-quality facilities, services, and staff. Equally, the actual needs and assumptions of the non-discretionary use of freight need to be properly understood. Lessons can be learned from the recent modal shift by domestic consumers in London who have reduced their personal carbon footprints by increasing their use of online and delivery services.
Unfortunately, this has resulted in increased traffic from delivery services. Claims of strong pro-environmental motivation therefore seem misplaced. We need to be wary of using green-tinted spectacles at every opportunity as they can cause us to misunderstand what freight's customers really need.
An increased awareness of the commercial drivers of freight leads to a recognition that private sector investment is an important part of the mix. Indeed, freight should be a sector for good returns for private sector investment. The Railway Industry Association (RIA) sees freight as one of seven ways to secure increased private sector investment.
Furthermore, RIA has also recognised that investment in the new ports, freight terminals, and depots that are needed is less complex than, say, urban station redevelopment projects. For freight projects, unexpected costs should therefore be lower, and strong returns higher, increasing the attractiveness of freight projects to private sector investment. To achieve this, it would be good to see freight projects learning from Highways England's new project-cost estimations, which use a method called 'reference class forecasting'.
This has reduced project cost estimation errors from 20 per cent to just two. Private investment There are also other ways in which private sector investment can be encouraged into the sector.
We should all learn from the example of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) that delivered London's Elizabeth line. Although costing nearly GBP15 billion, the new line across London has delivered over GBP42 billion of benefits to the UK economy. The sustainable finance market should also be used for rail freight projects.
Mutual Investment Models (MIMs) should also be explored. These allow for regional Government to share in some of the returns from project investment, via equity stakes in profit-sharing financial structures. MIMs could be particularly useful for improved freight infrastructure with regional benefits, such as new depot facilities that make intermodal changes easier.
We welcome the private application for investment in a new rail freight interchange at Hinckley in Leicestershire, although a decision has been delayed until March 2025, and look forward to further, similar schemes. Sharing data may also help identify new opportunities for sharing returns on investment. Many argue that, compared to infrastructure investment by national gGovernment in roads, rail freight projects are far better value for money.
Key challenges Whatever your view on the best way to attract investment into freight, we have been helping freight grow in numerous ways. Freight growth is one of six industry challenges on which our business is most focused.
Improving freight also has an impact on four of the remaining industry challenges: cost reduction, improving system reliability and resilience, adopting new technology and rail's value to society and sustainability. Freight is also explicitly included as an asset management category in the Rail Health and Safety Strategy. One of the key contributions is the development of the Common Principles for Managing Fatigue in the Freight Sector code of practice, which was published in 2020.
This was written collaboratively with freight operating companies across Great Britain so that shared issues unique to the sector were appropriately identified and addressed. The common principles give guidance on how to manage fatigue risk, ensuring safer and more efficient operations that will also be more reliable and commercially attractive. The benefits of data sharing and data analysis are increasing throughout rail.
These approaches can help find pinch points and opportunities that would otherwise be missed, as well as improve efficiency and performance. Freight can, and should, benefit from this, so we've also established the Freight Safety Data Hub, which offers metrics on 12 key safety indicators. Users can explore data on freight incidents and accidents, provided they keep that information within their own organisation.
This hub serves as a valuable resource for monitoring and improving safety standards within the freight sector. Additionally, the Common Safe System of Work (CSSoW) approach addresses high-risk interfaces between operators. Here, we were able to contribute our perspective as an independent organisation for the entire rail industry.
In this work, we also leveraged our experience with CSSoW for the passenger sector. More recently, we updated the J Tables, which are used to provide operators with information about the acceptable combinations of load units and vehicles for each freight gauge so they can recognise whether or not the combinations may be conveyed without authority. Improving freight gauging is crucial for accommodating new freight vehicles and ensuring they meet the required safety and operational standards.
Our freight research programme keeps abreast of current and future issues for freight too. It focuses on key themes such as network access, increasing average and maximum speeds, safe operations and maintenance, and low carbon freight. Future projects will address aerodynamic assessments and mitigations for 'superfast freight', improvements to the loads book, and better design for future freight locomotives.
Overall, our role in providing comprehensive guidelines, safety metrics, and research initiatives has significantly contributed to the advancement and safety of the rail freight sector. But collaboration throughout freight, and beyond, is vital too. We warmly welcome the greater involvement of freight representatives in our groups and committees.
We have many areas of shared concern and shared action and can learn from each other.
Greater collaboration between freight and passenger sectors will help all of rail.
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