Um carrot for private sidings
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TRANSPORT Minister, Mr Fred Mulley has taken the first step to implement his polidy of switching freight from road to rail in the new Railways Bill.
The Government has earmarked £5m for the payment of grants to firms towards the cost of constructing facilities for rail freight haulage.
This will include private railway sidings, depots, access roads and equipment.
For the moment, however, this is as far as the Minister intends to go. He has no further proposals in mind to force the pace of the transfer.
Mr Mulley has consulted about 100 large companies about the possibility of them using rail freight services instead of road haulage. and is understood to have had a good response.
Almost without exception they have expressed themselves willing to enter into discussions with British Rail about taking up the new grants to bring rail facilities to their factory doors.
So far British Rail has no specific locations for the new rail facilities in mind, but negotiations with senior executives of companies who are showing an interest will begin straight away.
The Minister believes the rapidly increasing cost of fuel for road vehicles will intensify interest among industrialists in the new facilities British Rail will be able to offer.
The main purpose of the new Bill is to completely reorganize the system of Government financial support for the railways.
The Government has abandoned the concept of a railway system being self supporting and is now prepared to accept substantial annual losses — £300m in the current year.
The Bill earmarks up to £1,500m to support losses over the next five years.
Track and signalling equipment will in future be charged to British Rail's revenue account which, in effect, means the Government is accepting responsibility for this major outlay.
This change is designed to meet the complaints by Labour MPs that road haulage has an advantage over the railways because major road construction is paid for by the Government rather than operators.