Adonis’s vision of rolling steel wheels.
Fittingly the news (as reported here) that the UK government is to push the use of high speed rail over the use of short haul aircraft for travel within the UK comes to me via a copy of The Guardian from the nice man seated opposite me in seat 29, en route to Edinburgh. We sit here in a little threesome of macbooks, the newspaper man, his colleague and I, with only a niggling worry at the back of the mind that there is only one 240v socket to share between us. The other two macbooks being the newer it is likely that my battery will run out sooner, giving me “first come, first serve” ownership rights over the electricity nipple. Perhaps the only time that a short(er) battery life gives any sort of advantage.
The preferential use of rail over air for passengers, and over road for long haul freight has been a long term interest for this author. Perhaps a legacy of being birthed in the rail town of Crewe, and being descended from a family with the stains of coal dust, diesel, and points grease deeply embedded in the pores. My father recently retired from his position as General Manager of Invensys Rail Division’s Asian operations, based in Bangkok, after a lifelong career in the industry of rail infrastructure internationally working for Westinghouse Brake and Signal (now a division in the conglomerate Invensys). Both of my grandfathers worked as boilermakers in the Crewe train yards, and my mother was a computer operator for British Rail in the 1960s. No trainspotter me, but I hold no distain for the concept of long distance steel wheeling and will now happily eschew the opportunity to doff my shoes and stand in line to be body-rayed at Heathrow.
The UK Governments newly found support for rail is a welcome change from years of neglect, and billions of pounds of subsidies and countless examples of planning support for more carbon intensive travel options, especially flying. The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead continue their legal challenge to the previously granted approval for a 3rd Heathrow runway even as transport secretary Lord Adonis reportedly states that “switching 46 million domestic air passengers a year to … rail is manifestly in the public interest”.
Interlude - just noticed that the curved girders supporting the roof over the platforms at York is attractively pierced with little star shaped cutouts.
Those 46 million passengers will only choose rail over anything else if the price is right (not I would argue, necessarily cheaper), while the service and experience meets or exceeds that to had in car or in the air. The provision of positive customer service experiences must also extend beyond the actual journey to include the planning, booking and ticketing; the transfers between the starting and end points and the relevant stations; and the numerous peripheral steps in between. The latter by the way, is a euphemism for “shopping opportunities”. Much effort has been made to create a sense and reality of “joined-up” services when flying. Ironically the Heathrow Express rail service provides a more seamless travel experience for air travellers starting or continuing their journeys into the capital than many long distance rail passengers might expect to find. Not only is there a morass of overlapping and uncoordinated rail services in the UK, operated by a mess of privatised and public companies, there is generally very little integration between rail and other transport modalities.
For passengers, the challenges of navigating between services - finding the connecting train for example - is hardly assisted at present to anywhere the degree that a potential air traveller might enjoy. It is impossible for instance to access a single application or internet hosted service from a handheld device and be provided with real time information on services throughout the duration of a multi-hop journey. Considering the availability and accuracy of GPS based location services on modern smartphones it is difficult to believe that an mash-up application can’t be developed that would not only pull together all the details of a travel booking, but could also guide the traveller to the correct platform for the next connecting service too.
Meanwhile, it is not just 46 million passengers who ought to encouraged into modern rolling stock, it is also long distance freight. Mile for mile, rail is most energy efficient method for hauling bulk goods, especially heavy produce. The pressure group Freight on Rail states that each bulk freight train can take the load equivalent of fifty HGVs off the roads. HGV drivers will twitchily reach for the keys for their big rigs all the while threatening rolling protests and road blockages at any suggestion of a concerted effort to switch bulk haulage (back) to rail, but the fact remains that shuttling the goods they carry by rail between distribution points emits far less GHGs than the fleet of HGVs required to do the same job would emit. Freight on Rail reports that 26% of the UK’s emissions can be attributed to road transport of goods.
A resurrection of the UK rail network is more than just rolling stock, routes and encouraging passengers and cartons alike onto the tracks. It is also about urban planning. Rail is an infrastructure at both local and national levels. Towns, transport interchanges and other peripheral infrastructure elements need to be planned with the idea that rail is a preferred transport modality. Rail infrastructure is long lasting and immovable once installed and so new urban developments, and redevelopment of existing towns etc need to flex a little to best accommodate their presence and encourage the use of the supplied services. Such ideas fly in the face of the open market free-for-all that characterises post-Thatcher Britain, however perhaps in these market interventionist times we may find the political and public will for a more planned approach now, with the goal of a better service and environment for all in the years ahead.
Last minute addendum: if this reaction by the airline industry is anything to go by, Adonis’s announcement might just have some legs.
Tags: AsiaPac, Climate change, Rail, Random thoughts, Travel