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Frail rail? Far from it
Coal haulage by rail is falling, but intermodal traffic
is starting to fill the gap. Tony Berkeley explains
how the rail freight industry is working hard to
attract new customers
Rail is always in the news,
be it fares, overcrowding,
costs or Network Rail’s
bonuses. Some of these may
be important for freight,
but beneath all this froth,
freight traffic continues to grow, at least
in the intermodal sector – even through
the worst of the downturn. Intermodal has
now replaced coal as the dominant mode of
traffic.
For many, rail freight is considered a bulk
goods mover, with other traffic remaining
a niche event. Indeed, before 2006, growth
in power station coal had dominated, with
new operators entering the market and
significant investment in port facilities and
rail equipment. The results for 2009-10 show
that, compared to the previous year, there
was an overall reduction of some 7.6 per cent.
Dominating this is a massive 21 per cent
fall in the movement of coal, principally to
power stations.
Other sectors, though, have fared much
better. Construction materials are back to
pre-recession levels, growing three per cent.
Metals grew by almost seven per cent and
international by more than five per cent.
Intermodal traffic was the star performer
and has continued its success, recording 6.5
per cent growth and the seventh consecutive
year of growth in a row. Indeed, in Q3,
WWW.RAILIMAGES.CO.UK
intermodal traffic-on-rail exceeded coal.
To keep intermodal growth going, though,
retailers need to be constantly assured that
rail is the right way forward and that it is
worth the time and effort to keep investing.
There are companies out there working hard
on just this, and achieving high reliability
rates, while competing well with road
transport, but there is still much to be done.
One of the many key challenges for
growth is now the introduction of a 24/7
railway in the UK. At a recent RFG seminar,
nearly all of the country’s key supermarkets,
including M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda,
Co-op and Morrisons, said that rail had
to operate on weekends, if it was going to
supply them with the level of service that
they needed in order to trust more volume
to the mode. This is unsurprising – the retail
sector works seven days a week and does not
see why it should have to use trucks at the
weekend whilst using rail in the week.
The industry is now well on the way
to agreeing with Network Rail the major
freight routes for which 24/7 access will be
provided, with or without diversion routes.
The other major headache for supermarkets
is consistent and open access to terminals for
any customer and operator. Rail terminals
are few and far between, compared with road
distribution depots, and the costs of road
transfer can be high, so ‘every mile counts’!
It would be much better in the future to
co-locate distribution depots and sheds, with
facilities for both intermodal and wagonload
traffic on the same multi-user site.
However, beyond all this is a network
on which, with few exceptions, new freight
flows can be accommodated, where and
when they are needed by the customers.
We now need to explore different ways
forward and continue to plan for growth,
which we are sure will come, whether by
economic activity or by the ever increasing
demand for more carbon efficient transport.
While the sector fully expects to take the
same kind of cuts as other business areas, we
will fight an attempt to lean on the sector as
a means of saving pain from passengers. We
are all in this together!
TONY BERKELEY IS THE CHAIRMAN OF THE
RAIL FREIGHT GROUP
AUGUST 2010 PAGE 25