Window closes on rail...
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II by Karen Miles
Rail freight is in crisis with industry experts warning that it is about to lose its brief window of opportunity to snatch business from road hauliers.
With only three or four years before the government is expected to sanction 44tonne lorries on UK roads for domestic work—strengthening the cost advantage road generally holds over rail—customers worried by the lack of capacity for rail freight growth are questioning the point of any future rail.
Sarah Crockford, railfreight expert at the Freight Transport Association, says customers which have conducted rail-freight trials, as well as "existing very, very large users of rail freight", could be about to decide against any further investment in rail sidings.
Uncertainty is further emphasised by last week's lambasting of Railtrack by Rail Regulator Tom Winsor. He has threatened to take sanctions against the track and signalling owner if it continues to fail to produce track investment plans for ending freight bottlenecks an the West Coast Main Line between Scotland, the Midlands and the South.
A spokesman for Winsor says: "The freight issue is coming to the bubble."
A failing rail-freight sector would disappoint hauliers keen to work in this area. it would also embarrass the Government, which has pledged to develop an integrated transport policy that frees up the roads by shifting car and lorry traffic onto rail.
Railtrack argues that rail operators such as EWS are failing to develop new markets—most of last year's 18% increase in rail freight came from the traditional coal market—and that it needs accurate predictions of freight demand on the WCML before investing.
But road-to-rail consultant Stuart Chandler accuses Raiftracli of "turning off a lot of potential customers" by dumping plans to develop the Piggyback Scheme, in which 4m-high trailers could have been switched from road to rail.