The UK could see strong long-term growth in the sector, as long as the strategic planning of the rail network takes rail freight into account. This was the forecast of Mike Garratt, a UK consultant during the RailFreight Webinar UK.
Mike Garratt, principal of MDS Transmodal, a consultancy based in the north of England, has predicted a changed landscape for rail freight, but expressed optimism for the future during the webinar held on 1 May. He identified areas of growth in the economy being supported by rail freight operations.
“The UK continues to consume and build infrastructure, but heavy industry is in decline and long term zero carbon policies will eventually eliminate all coal, petroleum and biomass traffic”, he said. “The non-carbon sector is growing, at a time when overall road freight traffic is falling. So the clear direction of travel is for quite rapid growth in rail freight overall. The real question has to be, where is the capacity to handle that extra growth”.
Historically, rail freight tonnage is very much lower than in the past. In 1967, over 200 million tonnes of cargo was transported. Much of that was for the now redundant coal industry. That weight lifted had fallen to just 80 million tonnes in the past twelve months. “A consequence of de-carbonisation, de-industrialisation and road competition”, noted Garratt. However, since 2005, intermodal rail freight had grown by 46 per cent and construction traffic by 16 per cent while total rail freight had fallen by 17% as non-carbon flows take over.
“As the railway industry re-emerges from the coronavirus crisis, and faces up to the conclusions of the Williams review, Except that the WIlliams review will, almost certainly be not only out-of-date, but toally irrelevant in the post C-19 world.
But they are all too correct about added freight capacity, including the dreaded ( to the DfT ) E-word, even extending down to those 2 – now notorious – gaps in London.