FEATURE LEGAL |
Encouraging modal shift by making the railway attractive to passengers Caroline Hooton and Darren Fodey explore different techniques to help move people back onto the railway and away from their cars
E
ver since the Liverpool and Manchester railway opened in 1830, rail operators have grappled with the issue of how to get more freight and more people to use the railway. The rise of the motorcar during the 20th century made this all-the-more pressing as mass production and general economic prosperity made cars more affordable – but at an environmental cost. Government policy – with a preference for low spending and perceived easy returns – turned towards roads and away from investment in rail. The result was that passenger miles first stagnated, and then declined, from the 1950s through to rail privatisation. Pre-pandemic, rail passenger journeys had more than doubled compared with the position on privatisation. Certainly, investment in rolling stock renewal – including investment in on-board facilities such as Wi-Fi – and station spaces improved the passenger experience, while slick advertising campaigns emphasising the benefits of intercity travel by rail and booking early helped to tempt people back to the network. Even so, there was much still
to be done – Transport Focus observed in its April 2019 submission to the Williams Rail Review that rail trips still only accounted for two per cent of all trips made in England and just eight per cent of distance travelled. One of the key planks in the current Government’s climate change agenda is to encourage a shift to public transportation. Indeed, the Department for Transport’s 4 March 2020 paper: Decarbonising Transport: Setting The Challenge specifically identified rail travel as a more environmentally friendly alternative to car use and ‘one of the most efficient ways of moving high volumes of people into city centres and moving people over long distances’. Unfortunately, three weeks after its publication the United Kingdom went into lockdown to tackle Covid-19. The Government told people to stay at home wherever possible and avoid public transport except for essential travel, with the result that passenger numbers fell by 70 per cent and there was a relative uptick in private car usage. Fortunately, as the vaccine rollout continues apace, there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. On 28 March 2021,
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Caroline Hooton
Darren Fodey
the Government’s ‘stay at home’ rule ended – although people were still advised to work from home where they could and minimise their journeys – while 12 April 2021 marked the reopening of non-essential retail. We are already starting to see signs of shifting demand, with more people travelling at weekends and train services ramping up to meet demand. There will inevitably be bumps on the way as the Government implements its roadmap to remove all legal restrictions on social contact by 21 June 2021. However, as we slowly emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic there is a real opportunity now to delivery better value to the taxpayer from the railway by finally placing passengers at the heart of the industry in order to encourage a modal shift that helps decarbonise the UK economy. So how can this be achieved? Government messaging and regulation How do we start working towards decarbonisation and move people back onto the railway and away from their cars? An ‘easy win’ that can be achieved is for the Department for Transport to run a Rail Professional
