Memorandum by Freight on Rail (RH 19)
A. FREIGHT
ON RAIL
Freight on Rail welcomes this opportunity to submit
evidence to the ETRA's transport sub-committee.
Freight on Rail is a new campaign working to
get goods off roads and onto rail as an important step in developing
a more sustainable distribution system.
Bringing together trade unions, the rail industry,
the Rail Freight Group and the environmental transport campaign
Transport 2000, Freight on Rail promotes the benefits of rail
freight both nationally and locally, advocates policy changes
that support the shift to rail, provides information and help
on freight related issues, and campaigns more broadly for a distribution
system that makes social and environmental as well as economic
sense.
Details of the Freight by Rail working party
are set out in D, below.
B. EVIDENCE
1. The role of the road haulage industry,
the way in which it operates, its contribution to the economy
of the United Kingdom, and its impact on the environment
Road haulage moves over 80 per cent of total goods
lifted in the UK, and around two thirds of total freight kilometres
travelled.[6]
As such, and like many other countries, road transport is the
mainstay of Britain's goods distribution system. Employing over
a million workers[7]
and worth around £55 billion, or nearly 4 per cent of gross
output,[8]
road haulage, on the face of it, makes a major contribution to
the UK economy.
Nevertheless, the costs that vans and heavy
goods vehicles impose upon societyin terms of CO2
and other greenhouse gas emissions, local air pollution, countryside
loss, noise, disruption to community life, road accidents, pollution
related illnesses and intimidationare heavy, and growing.
Vans and lorries make up 16 per cent of the
vehicles on our roads, but they account for a quarter of all transport
related CO2 output.[9]
Moreover, their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is likely
to increase if, as forecasts suggest, lorry and van traffic levels
rise to 25 per cent and 44 per cent above present levels in the
next 10 years.[10]
Freight on Rail does not believe that the UK can afford such an
increase.
The costs to our health of the road haulage
industry are also serious. 24,000 people die prematurely each
year from road-related pollution,[11]
and with HGVs accounting for 40 per cent of cancer-causing particulates
and a third of nitrous oxides,[12]
our heavily road-dependent distribution system must take the blame
for a sizeable number of these deaths. HGVs also contribute disproportionately
to road accidentscomprising 7 per cent of the vehicles
on our roads, they account, nevertheless, for around 17 per cent
of casualties. In 1998 alone they killed 576 people.[13]
Children, cyclists and the elderly are among
the most vulnerable road users, and the most likely to be injured
or killed. Fear of road traffic in general, and heavy lorries
in particular has reduced the quality of urban life and contributed
to trends that cause additional damage to our health and that
of the environment. Fear of traffic has, for instance, contributed
to the doubling in the last 10 years of the number of children
driven to school.[14]
This in turn has increased congestion and further reduced opportunities
for physical activity amongst an already dangerously sedentary
population.
Although accidents involving HGVs usually harm other
road users, rather than the lorry drivers themselves, research
suggests that the road haulage industry is not a healthy one for
employees either. Surveys into the health of professional drivers
indicate that their work exposes them to disproportionately high
risks of cancers, gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal disorders,
fatigue and noise related physical and psychological illnesses.[15]
The social and environmental costs of an unsustainable
goods transportation system are probably incalculable. But there
are some costs that can be measured. Congestion, for instance,
costs UK business around £20 billion a year.[16]
Clearly, fiscal measures such as VED have been
designed in order to charge users for the damage they inflict.
There are indications, however, that the current rate of taxation
is highly inadequate, as government acknowledges.[17]
One study suggests that once the environmental and social costs
of road haulage have been taken into account, HGVs meet only around
69 percent of their full social, economic and environmental costsor
59 per cent if interest payments on the capital value of the road
network are included.[18]
Add to these the gains made by cowboy operators flouting the law
and the figure is reduced further to around 50 per cent of real
costs.[19]
2. The impact on the industry of current and
past rates of vehicle excise duty and levels of duty on fuel
i. Vehicle excise duty
It is increasingly recognised that VED is inadequate
as a system of taxation as it does not charge lorries at point
of use; in other works, low mileage road users are taxed to the
same degree as high mileage road users. Nor does it address the
problems of congestion, road accidents and other costs to society
and the environment. An additional disadvantage is that VED does
not tackle the problem of cost recovery for road use in a country
other than the country of the vehicle's registration.
Freight on Rail argues that while it is vital
to move away from VED towards a taxation system that more effectively
penalises heavy road users at the point of use, such as weight
distance taxation (see below), this would take some time to implement,
particularly given the need to ensure interoperability across
EU Member States. In the meantime, therefore, we suggest a modified
VED which is graduated according to the emission standards that
the engines are designed to meet. We endorse, for instance, the
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's recommendations[20]
for a restructured VED that charges:
a reduced rate for vehicles with
engines meeting planned new emission limits and which are in operation
before the limits become mandatory;
an increased rate for vehicles with
engines that fail to meet current standards, unless fitted with
a pollution-abatement device.
ii. Fuel duty
Fuel use is an effective means of penalising carbon
dioxide emissions. Given its commitment to cut CO2
to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010, we are extremely disappointed
by Government's decision to abandon the fuel duty escalator in
the face of pressure from the road haulage industry. We would
like to see a return to the previous rate of 6 per cent above
inflation in the next Budget, with further increases in future
Budgets.
We should also add that, notwithstanding complaints
by the road haulage industry that VED and fuel prices are higher
here than elsewhere in Europe, the costs of road haulage are nevertheless
lower in the UK than in many other countries. While road tax and
fuel prices are higher in France, for instance, British haulage
companies do not have to pay the higher labour costs and motorway
tolls of their French colleagues. Interestingly, at a time when
road hauliers are complaining of unfair competition from overseas,
Europe, the French and German road haulage industries are complaining
of exactly the same thing.
We do however acknowledge that the road haulage
industry's complaints of unfair competition by foreign hauliers
operating in the UK are justified. We would support the development
of a vignette system, similar to that implemented in Belgium,
Denmark, Germany and elsewhere, payable by foreign hauliers, in
order to level the playing field between them and UK operators.
3. The regulations which govern the industry,
and their impact on the safety record and profitability of the
industry
While the majority of road haulage companies
operate within legal limits, there are a few that consistentlyand
it seems, successfullyflout the law. A random survey of
HGVs carried out by the Vehicle Inspectorate in January 1999 revealed
that some 25.4 per cent had significant faults which would warrant
prohibition if repairs were not carried out, while 12 per cent
had faults sufficiently serious to justify immediate prohibition.[21]
Illegal operators artificially lower the costs of road transport,
undercut and undermine lawful operators and reduce the comparative
competitiveness of rail.
Freight on Rail welcomes government's moves
to tighten enforcement of existing legislation and looks forward
to seeing the extent to which it backs up its words with adequate
funds. We are also particularly keen to see measures enabling
inspectors to impound unlicensed, illegally operated, overweight
or dangerous vehicles immediately, as well as measures to tighten
lorry routing.
4. What changes to government policies affecting
the road haulage industry are needed to benefit the economy and
the environment?
The ETRA has itself summarised succinctly those
range of measures needed to benefit the economy and the environment
which will have an impact upon the road haulage industry. As stated
in its ninth report on the Integrated Transport White Paper, these
include "the more efficient distribution of goods carried
by road; the switch of goods from road to less environmentally
damaging modes of transport, in particular rail and water; and
the reduction in the distance goods are taken from the point of
production to the place of consumption, for example by purchasing
more locally produced items."[22]
Freight on Rail supports all these objectives
but will confine itself here to commenting on some of the measures
required to encourage modal shift from road to rail. A relatively
few number of lorries are responsible for a large proportion of
overall mileage. Around 10 per cent of lorries account for about
20 per cent of the goods transported and nearly half of total
tonne-kilometres.[23]
Research suggests[24]
that positive measures to encourage a shift from road to rail
would cut total lorry mileage by up to 50 per cent. Some of the
measures Freight on Rail would like to see adopted include:
i. Fairer taxation
Freight on Rail would like to see Government
undertaking more research into distance-weight taxation, which
has already been established in New Zealand, and will shortly
be implemented in Switzerland. This system has the advantage of
taxing road users at the point of use and taxing the heaviest
users most heavily. Such a system, if implemented on a Europe
wide basis, would also ensure that member states with the heaviest
road traffic are compensated appropriately. It will, however,
require Europe-wide investment in tracking technology.
A distance-weight system could be revenue-neutral
at the outset, but Freight on Rail would like to see tax levels
rising in time to reflect more accurately the environmental and
social costs outlined in 1, above. Such a scheme would, we envisage,
replace both VED and fuel duty.
ii. Higher rate of grant payment for rail
Freight on Rail supports the Rail Freight Group's
proposals for an increased rate of grant[25]
as follows:
| Existing
| Proposed |
Rural motorways and rural duel carriage ways:
Uncongested
|
20p |
25p
|
Congested | 20p
| £1.00 |
Urban dual, single carriageways and motorways
| £1.50 | £2.00
|
Rural single carriageway roads | £1.00
| £1.25 |
iii. New Grants
Neither the DETR's Track Access Grant nor the Freight Facilities
Grant covers the extra costs entailed in transhipping goods from
one mode of transport to another. We support the Rail Freight
Group's calls for a terminal grant to cover these costs, so enabling
rail to compete on a level playing field with road, and encouraging
co-ordination between different modes of transport.
iv. A halt on sales of British Rail land
To quote the Freight Transport Association: "We find
the Government's position on this matter confusing. On the one
hand industry is being encouraged to see rail freight as a viable
long-term logistics solution, on the other policies are being
implemented that will restrict industry's ability to use rail
in the future."[26]
It is vitally important that Government act immediately to
halt any further sales of land which are, or could be of strategic
importance to rail. We of course acknowledge that there are many
other pressures on brownfield sites, such as the need for new
housing. Nevertheless, we do not believe that building sites which
are so crucial to the development of a less fuel- and land-intensive
distribution system, can possibly be a step in a more sustainable
direction.
Government should a) allow the SRA to hold onto sites identified
by the Rail Freight Group and others as having rail-strategic
importance and b) strengthen planning guidance to require local
authorities to identify and protect potential and existing railway
sites and railway lines.
v. Network capacity
Freight on Rail would like to see more investment in the
railway network capacity for the carrying of passengers and freight,
with funding channelled through the SRA. We would also like to
see the Regulator reminding Railtrack, in the strongest terms,
of its obligations under the License Agreement, and requiring
them to make adequate infrastructure investment both for passenger
and for freight transport in the coming years.
vi. Changes to the planning system
Local Transport Plan guidance states that local authorities,
while preparing their local transport plans should "take
count of" the contribution of rail freight. Planning Policy
Guidance Note 13 also makes mention of the value of rail. We welcome
these positive acknowledgements of rail's role. But, while welcome
as far as they go, these statements do not go far enough. In particular,
since freight usually moves through regions and across district
and county boundaries, there needs to be more emphasis on the
importance of local authorities working in partnership to develop
sustainable distribution strategies for the region as a whole
and more guidance on how they might best achieve this.
Awareness of the importance of rail freight is extremely
low among local authorities. In one recent survey of local authorities
across England and Wales, 81.4 per cent respondents said they
had disused/abandoned trackbeds in their authority area but only
30.5 per cent said they were protected for future rail use in
a statutory plan.[27]
We would like to see Government doing more to increase awareness
of the importance of rail freight at the local and regional level.
C. CONCLUSION
Lorries are a necessary fact of life. At present, however,
the damage they cause to UK society and the global environment
as a whole, outweighs many of the positive contributions they
make.
This need not be the case. Lorries can and must have a part
to play in a sustainable distribution strategy. But this can only
be a productive one if:
Current health and environmental standards are
enforced and extended.
The taxation system is altered to reflect fully
the social and environmental costs they impose.
There is adequate support for alternative modes
of distribution, particularly rail and water transport.
Action is taken to reduce the unnecessary transportation
of goods.
February 2000
6
Transport Statistics Great Britain, 1999 Edition, Department
for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1999. Back
7
Road Haulage Association, February 2000. Back
8
Office for National Statistics in Sustainable Distribution:
A Strategy, DETR, 1999. Back
9
Sustainable Distribution: A Strategy, DETR, 1999. Back
10
Sustainable Distribution: A Strategy, DETR, 1999. Back
11
Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, The
Quantification of the Effects of Air Pollution and Health in the
United Kingdom, Stationery Office 1997. Back
12
Sustainable Distribution: A Strategy, DETR, 1999. Back
13
National Survey of Road Accident Statistics, DETR,
1999. Back
14
School Travel Advisory Group, Report, 1998-99. Back
15
John Whitelegg, Health of Professional Drivers: a report
for the Transport and General Workers Union, Eco-Logica Ltd, May
1995. Back
16
Confederation of British Industries, personal communication,
January 2000. Back
17
Sustainable Distribution: A Strategy, DETR, 1999. Back
18
Oxford Economic Research Associates, Environmental and Social
Costs of Heavy Goods Vehicles and Options for Reforming the Fiscal
System, report prepared for English Welsh and Scottish Railway,
January 1999. Back
19
Rail Freight Group News, Rail Freight Group, January 2000. Back
20
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Transport and
the Environment: Eighteenth Report, 1994. Back
21
Sustainable Distribution: A Strategy, DETR, 1999. Back
22
Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee, Ninth
Report, Integrated Transport White Paper, Volume 1, Report
and Proceedings of the Committee, The Stationery Office, 1999. Back
23
DETR, Continuing Survey of Road Goods Transport Great
Britain 1998. Back
24
John Whitelegg, Freight Transport, Logistics and Sustainable
Development, World Wide Fund for Nature, June 1995. Back
25
Rail Freight Group News, January 2000. Back
26
Logistics and Transport Focus, The Journal of the
Institute of Logistics and Transport, January-February 2000. Back
27
Greensmith and Haywood, Rail freight growth and the land
use planning system, Sheffield Hallam University, 1999. Back
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