OFF THE RAILS
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• If you want the epitome of free market forces look no further than freight transport. Its something the pundits should bear in mind as they poke through Charterail's eqtrails.
Rail can't compete with road transport — particularly now that recession-fuelled rates have hit rock bottom. If it could we'd all be writing for Railway Gazette.
Double railfreight tomorrow and you'd cut roadfreight by 5%. This figure is the average amount roadfreight grows by every year. Net result — no change.
Perhaps the greatest irony over the collapse of Charterail was that BR was said to be charging too much for the use of its tracks and trains. Didn't it want the business? As for Transport Secretary Malcolm Rifkind claiming: "I have seen the future and it works", he couldn't have been looking too clearly. But before road hauliers take smug satisfaction from the death of a rail-based competitor they should consider the hauliers who have been caught up in the Charterail collapse. As CM closed for press a rescue package was in the air. For the sake of those hauliers we hope it works.
In any case, the pro-rail lobby won't have learnt anything from the experience. Their cries of "two rails good, four wheels bad" will be just as strident.
The real problem with switching freight from road to rail has never been addressed. If rail is to compete equally with road it must match its rates. Right now it can't. So if the pro-rail lobby wants more goods carried by rail somebody is going to have to pay for it.
Conservative politicians can bluster and blow as much as they like about how committed they are to rail freight. But in the middle of one of the worst recessions they know their fate 7 depends on the free market — and road haulage.