Rail Freight

Getting on the Right Track

Over the last 50 years, most of the UK’s freight has been transported by road.  However, with increasing congestion on our roads and an 80% cut in CO2 emissions required by 2050, is this the time to be considering the value of rail to move goods around our nation?

The Institution’s latest report, Rail Freight: Getting on the Right Track examines the advantages and challenges to this question and highlights the need for a holistic rail strategy to meet the needs of the railway passenger and freight sectors on our network.

Congestion on our roads is getting worse.  Economically, congestion costs an estimated £10 billion per annum lost in business due to our road network not being able to cope with the high levels of usage.

While people are more often choosing to use public transport, however, a sizeable percentage of the vehicles on our roads are commercial heavy good vehicles or vans.  This activity is necessary for the UK to maintain a world-class economy.  But road is not necessarily the only viable method of transportation for imported or manufactured goods in the UK or the most environmentally sound.

The environmental challenge

The government has set a binding target to achieve an 80% overall reduction, below 1990 levels, in Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050.   This will have to be achieved largely by reducing the number of vehicles on the road.  The carbon challenge for the UK transport sector is that it now needs to achieve a CO2 saving of 129 million tonnes by 2050. If it fails to do so, the rest of the UK economy will be under pressure to subsidise the transport sector’s poor emissions record.

Facts about freight

Within the UK freight sector, road freight now contributes 92% of domestic freight related emissions, and technology is unlikely to deliver the required reductions in CO2 emissions for this sector to meet its 2050 obligations.

With current projections estimating an 8% shift in the market share of freight movements from road to rail by 2030 this will still only deliver about 1% of the whole transport sector’s required emissions reductions against 1990 levels. Added to this, a 1% shift in freight from road to rail will deliver savings of approximately 0.2 million tonnes of CO2 yet require an increase in freight capacity of nearly 10%, the capacity challenge for the rail freight industry is massive.

This is the crux of the issue for the rail freight industry: the opportunity for rail freight to deliver significant CO2 savings is there, however the facilities to enable this are not. To see substantial CO2 reductions from the transport sector, the projected growth rates for rail freight need to be much higher. To achieve this, investment in rail, and some road, infrastructure needs to be substantial and ambitious.

Getting our freight transport on the right tracks

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers believes it is time that the UK re-examines the economic and environmental value of using rail as a key distributor of freight around our nation.

Latterly, investment in rail freight, when compared to passenger transportation, has been low. Although government is trying to rectify this, current funds allocation will not achieve the benefits to the UK environment, and economy, that rail freight is capable of delivering.

Rail freight usage is actually on the increase: 60% growth since 1994/5 and a projected growth of the entire market share against road haulage by 8% by 2030. From an environmental perspective, this is positive. Logistically, this could be difficult given the UK railways’ decline in track length since the turn of the century.

Moreover, the growth in passenger and freight transport requirements creates strain for the UK transport infrastructure, the environment and the economy.

Collaboration rather than conflict

The Institution is recommending governmental encouragement of greater collaboration between road and rail freight sectors. For example, if road haulage were to be reduced, rail could provide a mechanism through which large numbers of HGVs could be removed from the UK’s congested long distance arteries, thus saving billions of pounds for the UK economy each year. This would also deliver significant CO2 savings.

Brown's green solution

Government has to be ambitious and ensure rail freight has the infrastructure to be at the heart of the strategy to attain sustainable transport goals now and in the future. As an option for reducing carbon emissions, and congestion, rail freight provides the most tangible solution for the sustainable movement of goods around the UK. CO2 emissions from rail freight are nearly 10 times lower than those from HGV’s, which in turn, are substantially less carbon intensive than light weight vehicles (vans).

Projected growth in the rail freight industry indicates that there will be 60% increase in volume being carried, and an increase in tonne kilometres of 114%, by 2030. This growth cannot be met by the current infrastructure available, at the same time as achieving growth in passenger transport on rail.  Quite simply, we are outgrowing our multi-functional network.

During this period of economic downturn, the savings to be made each year by eliminating congestion cannot be overlooked.  The government could do well to consider the development of key infrastructural programmes as major regional or sector stimuli.  Transportation has the opportunity to assist and needs bold decisive direction which could have short and long term benefits to the economy and our environment.

What needs to happen

1. The Government to undertake a holistic review of the UK rail network and agree an even more bold investment programme which accommodates passenger and freight requirements.  A new High Speed north-south link should be developed. Furthermore, additional linkages should be created linking all major ports with key cities and under-utilised rail lines throughout the UK connected together to establish a freight ‘hub’ and ‘spoke’ network.  This would ultimately lead to a world-class freight distribution system that is environmentally efficient in the long term whilst not impacting on the expansion of the rail passenger network.  In the short term, this national project would provide a major economic stimulus helping a wide range of construction and manufacturing companies.
2. For industry to be incentivised to use low-carbon distribution options to help reduce the transport sectors percentage of the 2050 targets.
3. Development of an industry and consumer ‘Low Carbon Transit Impact’ labelling system which provides consumers make educated environmental judgements when deciding on products – very much like the current ‘Air Freight’ labelling being introduced by supermarkets.  This is a continuation of the IMechE ‘Green ticketing’ proposal introduced in the 2008 Low Carbon Mobility report where all passenger ticketing for road, rail and air transportation would show the expected CO2 emissions value for the chosen journey.
4. For the road and rail sectors to work together to develop more environmentally suitable road distance solutions for industry, using rail for long distance movement, HGVs for regional distribution and LGVs for local distribution.  Indirectly this proposition would benefit the UK road haulage industry as they would be best placed to service regional rail hubs.

View the full report: Rail Freight Report.