The left has always known that railways are the transport mode of the future. With approaching gridlock on Britain's roads, the country's railway corridors, both used and unused, are now more vital than ever. The long awaited White Paper Delivering a Sustainable Railway, published in July, starts with much New Labour hype, but promises too little and makes no reference to the massive and costly failures of privatisation. The left meanwhile has continued to press the case for a re–integrated, planned, expanded and publicly owned railway.
Even the inadequate aspirations of the White Paper will not be achieved without massive and unnecessary costs, unless public ownership is re–established and the industry is put back into the hands of those dedicated railway employees who kept Britain's railways alive in the dark days of Thatcher, when, despite massive under–funding, our railways had the highest level of productivity in Europe and 'worked miracles on a pittance' as described by former rail regulator Tom Winsor.
There is now a critical lack of capacity in both track and rolling stock. The White Paper's welcome announcement that the Thameslink modernisation is to go ahead, although years late, is simply a response to crisis on a line with appalling overcrowding and thousands of passengers paying high fares to stand on crowded trains on their way to work.
But it is the White Paper's pathetic failure to address the lack of rail freight capacity which is most astonishing. Ten billion pounds has been committed by the White Paper to railway investment, with only £200 million to freight. That is 1/50 of the total. The White Paper makes no commitment on other big schemes such as Crossrail, which ministers estimate will cost £16 billion, 80 times greater than the £200 million committed to rail freight for the whole country. Another comparison is that the rail freight figure is less than the amount of money to be spent on modernising each of the Reading and Birmingham New Street stations.
But the failure of the White Paper to detail the horrendous costs of privatisation is its starkest omission. Railway industry insiders estimate that laying new track now costs five times what it did in nationalised BR days when directly employed railway engineers worked under tight cash limit constraints. Much maintenance was brought in–house by Network Rail when government recognised that maintenance costs were some four times what they were under BR. And there are many who argue that separating new build and maintenance is a false division and that all new build should be brought in–house too.
Contracting, sub–contracting and sub–sub–contracting means that public money is poured into many deep pockets with very little effective control. A simple point is that at every interface in the fragmented railway industry, there are costs. Eliminate the interfaces by integrating the whole railway system into one industry, a publicly owned and accountable industry, and those costs disappear. And of course in the whole privatisation saga, especially during the appalling Railtrack years, financial and legal consultants made vast sums of money laughing all the way to the bank.
The biggest rip off of all has been by the Rosco's, the rolling stock companies, three big banks who own the rolling stock and lease it to the train operating companies. Leasing charges have typically been 30 per cent, a third of the total cost of rolling stock each year, rolling stock which can last for 20 years and more. The banks are not interested in railways, they are interested in money, and that money is siphoned out of the pockets of passengers and taken from taxpayers. All rolling stock should in future be publicly owned, and in the short term it would be a simple matter to legislate to fix leasing charges nearer to five per cent than 30 per cent so the banks would no longer be able to rip off the public purse.
But to return to freight, the fact is that rail freight could and should have a massive future with dedicated large gauge links to the Channel Tunnel and the growing rail freight network on the continent of Europe. Some of us have been arguing the case for a dedicated rail freight line from Glasgow to the Channel Tunnel providing for full–scale lorry trailers on trains, full–sized containers, and in the longer term, double–stacked containers on the core 400 mile route. We have proposed that this scheme be built on old track bed and existing under–utilised rail routes with terminals at key locations near to motorways in the major areas of population and economic activity thus providing for freight hauliers to put their road trailers and containers on to trains for fast and reliable delivery to destinations on the continent.
We have too little rail capacity, our fares are substantially higher than those in Europe and the White Paper simply does not measure up as far as freight is concerned. A dedicated 35 mile rail freight line is being built through the Brenner Pass from Italy to Austria, a vast new rail freight tunnel is being built through the Alps at St Gothard and the Dutch have built the dedicated freight route between Rotterdam and Germany. All of these and more are piecing together to form a serious rail freight network for the long term future. If Britain does not build a dedicated and large gauge rail freight route from our industrial regions to the Channel Tunnel and thence to the continent, Britain's long term economic performance will be damaged.
And finally, there are the economic environmental factors. Transporting freight by road, even with modern cleaner engines, produces up to 12 times more carbon dioxide (CO2) per ton mile than does rail freight. Putting lorry trailers and containers on trains at inter–modal depots near to our motorways will cut CO2 emissions by millions of tons.
The White Paper's failure to address the freight issue is overshadowed only by its greatest omission, which is to recognise the financial disaster of privatisation and to commit once again to public ownership for our railways.
Kelvin Hopkins MP
