Freight Evidence to The Local Government & Transport Committee

2 December 2005

Dear Sir

The Friends of the Far North Line (FOFNL) was formed in 1994 to support the railway line between Inverness and Wick and currently has 190 members. FoFNL is concerned that recent freight flows of groceries and building supplies to Georgemas and Thurso and of timber from Kinbrace have ceased in the last year, temporarily we hope. We would like to give the following written comments to the Committee's Freight Transport Inquiry.

Fair Competition

Government policy assists the environmentally desirable transfer of freight from road to rail with freight facilities grants. Other Government policies are working against this. These include the regular increases in the sizes permitted for road goods vehicles and the regular taxation increases on diesel fuel for the railways while the duty for road hauliers has been frozen.

Several MSPs in recent debates (such as that about the A9) have urged a major switch of freight from road to rail. It has not been happening to any significant degree because the regulatory conditions are onerous and observed by the railway in some contrast to what is happening on the roads. We have the absurd position of a very safe and therefore costly railway which is under-used. In contrast, although there is a wide array of safety legislation for road haulage, the responsible hauliers and the public are having to plead for it to be properly enforced to ensure fair competition and proper safety within the road haulage industry itself. We wonder if any resources are being made available to monitor the industry's compliance with the new drivers' hours legislation?

We would prefer to see quick action rather than more time taken up in research. However, we do believe it would be helpful to commission an independent report to identify the true total costs of road use taking into account policing, the cost of deaths and hospitalisation, all forms of environmental damage and a considered apportionment of costs between passenger and freight traffic. The introduction of heavier road vehicles has not only abstracted freight traffic from the railway by removing rail competitive advantage but fewer, more fuel efficient, HGVs are paying in aggregate less in fuel duty than was the case say with 38 tonnes GLW vehicles. Therefore the operators of HGVs have increased the level of damage on public infrastructure but proportionally pay less.

To really cater for the expressed aspirations of MSPs, MPs and the public and achieve modal shift, much more needs to be done to tackle the costs of new infrastructure and ongoing maintenance for the railways. While new roads and new road bridges are built regularly using money from the public purse, major rail improvements (other than sidings) and maintenance have to come out of rail industry funds. Again it is ultimately from the public purse, but the assessment and approval system seems to be so much more onerous. The benefits of rail track and vehicle infrastructure to move freight are rightly perceived by MSPs as being substantial, but the administrative and financial systems to achieve such an end-result sensibly (in line with government environmental policy) and timeously are not in place. There is a need for more joined up thinking and perhaps the radical acceptance that railway tracks should be funded in a no less favourable way than roads. Indeed to achieve the desired environmental ends, there should be a hugely positive bias towards rail freight infrastructure as the only way to achieve our aspirations. That is the challenge for MSPs.

Management

FoFNL's perception is that the effects of rail freight privatisation, with initially a dominant provider controlled from overseas, have been more detrimental than helpful. The situation has changed a little in recent years with more companies entering the market and providing some competition on price and service. The sea change in the rail service contract for Royal Mail is an example.

For the Government to achieve its ambition of moving freight from road to rail in any meaningful amount, it needs to be able to rely on the operators to share that philosophy and play their part. An overseas boardroom is not going to consider niceties like this when discussing maximising their profits or minimising potential losses, whichever the case may be. Similarly it is going to have a global view on staff numbers.

FoFNL believes the principal failure of rail freight privatisation has been the removal of experienced local staff with appropriate authority and accountability. There is a compelling case for budgets to be passed down to local levels and solutions appropriate to local circumstances introduced. A "one-cap fits all" approach is destroying rural railways. The introduction of local rail freight operators providing a local service to local communities, through the co-operation of shippers, local authorities and road hauliers would be one way forward. This model is common in both the USA and Europe. UK major rail freight players are focussed on maintaining gross margin rather than providing a local service. Worryingly for the operators, Network Rail would seem to be failing to meet its statutory requirements to maintain the railway as it was at privatisation.

Britain has tended to look to US transport practice too much in the past and a more "Continental" approach over the last 50 years might have been better. The virtual absence of coastal shipping and rail from the freight market leaves us without alternatives. The re-creation of any networks in these areas will be expensive and time consuming. Present policies appear to have failed. The removal of coal tonnage from rail statistics would leave a relatively small balance of traffic.

The repatriation of transport budgets to the Executive gives Scotland the opportunity to introduce transport policies suited to our particular requirements. In a sense the movement of goods has in the recent past been too cheap. A new era of expensive fuel may lead to fewer empty movements and a long-term trend back towards local production. A significant amount of total CO² production is produced by transport. This must be addressed and reduced to deal with a possible climatic catastrophe.

Rail infrastructure

Most rail infrastructure dates from the Victorian age. All trunk routes with potential to handle freight traffic should sensibly be upgraded to handle 9ft 6ins. high containers on normal height platform wagons also wide enough to take refrigerated boxes. These routes should be maintained to handle 25.5 tonne axle loading and 1000-metre train lengths.

As far as the Far North line (FNL) is concerned freight speed limits should be raised (eg the 20mph restriction from Tain to Ardgay) and the Shin Viaduct needs strengthening to take full weight trainloads of oil. Presently the tanks are limited to only 60% full.

Useful policy changes would be to have every major industrial plant adjacent to a railway reconnected to the system. All costs within railway land should be the total responsibility of Network Rail. Traders should only be responsible for costs within their property. In the North, sites to be listed in this way would be Invergordon Distillers, the former smelter site, Deephaven at Evanton, Nexfor at Dalcross, and Gordon Sawmills at Nairn.

It would be useful to transfer the best intermodal practices from Switzerland/Austria and to give 100% financial R&D support for innovative technical developments such as the freight diesel multiple-unit and the Swiss Cargo Domino system idea.

Operations

Inverness should be a key hub for rail freight traffic in to the Highlands and further north. There is an urgent imperative to extend and upgrade the terminal facilities in the Millburn Yard to allow access for all current and potential operators. Lines from the south and east and to the north require upgrading for freight. Examples are

1. Extending 9ft 6in container gauge clearance through from Elgin to Invergordon & Fearn (for Nigg). Trying to overcome similar constraints at Killiecrankie tunnel.
2. Overcoming some of the capacity constraints of the single track lines by restoring the former passing loops at Ballinluig and Etteridge between Perth and Inverness, at Orton between Aberdeen and Inverness and at Lentran/Clunes and at Evanton on the FNL.
3. Reinstating the double track between Inverness and the proposed inter-modal freight transhipment yard at Dalcross Airport. (This is needed for passenger operations also).
4. Retaining, rather than selling off, railway goods yards at stations and elsewhere.

Developing new services requires the co-ordinated use of all possible grants and incentives. The lines to Inverness and on to Thurso and Wick are designated as part of the Trans European Network (TEN) system of the EU. Every effort should be made to harness European funds to help towards the required improvements. It is a sad fact that Scotland has rarely used available European funding to improve its railways in contrast to most other EU countries.

In view of the environmental sensitivity of mountain areas, a 10-year waiver of freight train track access charges would be a good idea to allow traffic to develop. The introduction of new daily freight trains from Thurso to Inverness, Inverness to Aberdeen and Inverness to central Scotland might require launch support. A census of present traffic flows from Orkney and Caithness to Inverness and further south would establish the densities and pattern of these to assess what could be sensibly transferred to rail. FoFNL members would be willing to assist with this.

New services

FoFNL considers the following freight flows could be suitable for transfer to rail

1. Transfer the gas traffic onto rail to Georgemas or Wick. Road tankers going down and up Berriedale Braes are a potential safety nightmare.
2. Another worrying potential safety hazard is the presence of high sided waste lorries on the A9 and A96 travelling from the north and Inverness to landfill sites. A far safer alternative would be to transfer the contract to the Oxwellmains site near Dunbar which is rail connected. This might mean market direction for environmental benefit rather than just accepting the lowest tender.
3. The increasing amount of timber traffic in the Highlands would be better carried by rail or sea. It should be a priority to find funding to ensure that enough timber wagons are built for future expansion and for new projects such as the proposed ForScot project at Delny near Invergordon.
4. We trust that EWS or a new operator will get the Kinbrace timber up and running again and that the required new siding at Nexfor towards Dalcross will soon be funded and installed.
5. The former grocery traffic on the FNL could be partially restored with the new Tesco store opening in Wick. If the new Homebase store could also be persuaded to use rail as well it would make this train more economic. Again, market direction should be considered.
6. There should be scope for parcels trunking of traffic for various carriers from Inverness to Caithness. A successful parcels train serves Inverness from the south.

Conclusion

Many commentators are agreed that a major transfer of freight from road on to rail would be a good thing. FoFNL would suggest that the policy to drive this has to be much more robust than in the past. It is no use leaving it entirely to market forces. If we want the policy to work, serious incentives and even market direction are required. Road haulage is seen as the easy option and often seems to be cheaper because many of the actual environmental and safety costs are not factored in and fall to the wider community to pay. Some radical analysis of the true comparative costs of the different transport modes is required, along with more inclusive decision-making on the appropriate mode for each traffic to produce the least long term harm to the environment and conserve fuel supplies.