the knowledge
Railway strategy is heading for the sidings
I
concede that it would be disingenuous to to dry up. The agenda has quickly changed and describe the events of the past two years as we are now spending our energy on savings, a “perturbation”, but I am somewhat taken redundancies and cutbacks. Quickly reversing aback that after years of soul searching, any concept of building up capacity and with it reports and strategising about how we will manage greening up travel. the growth in use of public transport that we are NO CRYSTAL BALLS now in full handbrake-turn mode and looking to Dealing with the here and now has obvious ‘make savings’ and ‘reduce services’. Dr Michael Galvin disadvantages when increasing capacity is a Headlines are popping up such as ‘Rail long-term project. No one can guarantee that https://mobility employers and unions agree to talks over £2bn in the years to come we will see the rail travel serviceslimited of cuts and job losses’, ‘Rail industry is seeking records of 2018 and 2019 being broken but we do .com thousands of redundancies across Great Britain know many things that don’t need a crystal ball. after falls in passengers due to Covid’ and ‘Train People have always and likely will always travel operators have been told to find ways to cut hundreds (Read Niblett and Beuret’s book – ‘Why travel?’) so capacity of millions of pounds from railway operating costs next will be needed. year’. Reversing the Beeching cuts was a good policy based on Only two years ago Network Rail was claiming that the idea that if you don’t have a station near where you live rail travel had doubled in the past twenty years and the but you do have a car, you are more likely to complete your government set aside £500m to reverse many of the journey in your car – so build back the stations. Beeching cuts made 50 years ago which reduced the rail Travel will recover due to a number of tangible and network by a third. intangible reasons; road pricing, safety, environmental One interesting piece of research regarding the Beeching considerations, comfort, convenience and cost. During this cuts by economists at the Centre for Economic Performance period, in effect a pause for breath, isn’t it the time to build at the LSE shows why. The 20% of places most exposed to out capacity, to eradicate bottlenecks, to link services and rail cuts between 1950 and 1980s (some of which occurred reduce journey times? before the Beeching report) have seen 24 percentage points While it is hard to justify trains full of fresh air trundling less population growth than the 20% least exposed. There has around the countryside, it does not seem hard to justify also been a brain drain of young and skilled workers, and an delivering projects that will increase capacity at a time when ageing of the population. To every action there is a reaction. the least number of people will be adversely impacted. OUR VIABILITY IS REDUCED BY PRIVATE CAR USAGE
DR BEECHING – MUCH MALIGNED
So why should this industry be concerned about what is Dr Beeching has been judged harshly and I would argue happening to rail? Well, because our prosperity is directly unfairly by history. He carried out his master’s bidding, albeit linked to modal shift. Fewer services and certainly lessforlornly. Fundamentally The Beeching Report was an attempt reliable services on the rails pushes people to travel by car. to save money. It paved the way for an exodus from rail to Car drivers don’t need cabs. It is almost as linear as that. private car and the billions that were needed to provide the Improved public transport increases the realisable market road space for that shift. So the whole project savings were that is available to the cab industry. It wasn’t long ago that I dubious at best. used to write about billions spent on roads and millions spent In this century, we face very different challenges, most on public transport to evidence my view of governments’ (all notably the need to live cleaner lives and be less impactful of them) seriousness in stimulating modal shift. on the environment. Even relatively modest commuter trains Two years ago, we appeared to be (6 carriages) carry around 1,300 entering a golden period of public “Improved public passengers. That’s a lot of cars off of transport being taken seriously and at the road. Many of them will take a cab transport increases last some strategic thinking starting to or two at the other end of their journey. appear. I don’t want to be disingenuous the realisable market Who says rail doesn’t matter? so let’s be moderate here – as soon as that is available to n w ww.mobilityservices the upward trend flattened and then the cab industry...” limited.com went into reverse, the money appeared
36
MARCH 2022
