Memorandum by Freightliner Group (RR 02)
RURAL RAILWAYS
1. INTRODUCTION
This evidence is submitted by the Freightliner
Group, which consists of two licensed rail freight operating companies,
Freightliner Ltd and Freightliner Heavy Haul Ltd.
Freightliner Ltd is the UK's largest intermodal
rail operator, and moves some 600,000 intercontinental containers
a year between the major container ports (particularly Felixstowe,
Southampton, Tilbury and Thamesport) and 13 inland destinations.
Freightliner Heavy Haul Ltd has been working
in the rail bulk market for four years, and now operates more
than 1,000 trains a week carrying coal, rail infrastructure materials,
cement, cars and vans, domestic waste, aggregates and petroleum
products throughout Britain.
2. A MODERN,
GROWING BUSINESS
The Freightliner Group's rail business increased
by more than 11% in 2002-03 compared with the previous year, and
growth has continued in the financial year about to end. This
is only possible because rail freight provides effective and efficient
solutions to the commercial needs of the British economy, and
because Freightliner has procured substantial investment in the
equipment needed to provide these services for its customers.
We expect to take delivery of our 100th new diesel locomotive
soon; we have had 370 new coal wagons built, and are in the course
of receiving 440 new container-carrying wagons for our intercontinental
container and domestic waste businesses. Investments have also
been made in cranes and infrastructure at our terminals, and we
are continuing to increase the number of people we employ.
3. RURAL RAILWAYS
In general we welcome the Strategic Rail Authority's
new approach to community railways, and endorse the objectives
it has set out in its consultation document on the subject. We
believe that there is significant scope for innovative approaches
to the funding and management of such railways, and that there
may be lessons in these approaches which could be of value both
to those parts of the network used only by freight and for the
whole of Network Rail.
4. FREIGHT ON
RURAL RAILWAYS
However, we are concerned that the draft policy
document does not contain any statements of clear principle as
to how freight is to be treated on the routes identified as being
of interest for community rail. The lines in Appendix C to the
draft strategy include some which are, or have the potential to
be, important links in the national freight network, whilst others
are known to have potential or opportunities for the development
of significant freight traffic flows. It is essential that the
strategy sets out how freight is to be treated on these routes,
and makes it clear that actual or future freight traffic on the
routes will require access to the routes and from them to the
national network. If there has been route degradation since privatisation
affecting the capability or capacity of a line for present or
proposed freight traffic, Network Rail may under an obligation
in its licence to ensure that the appropriate capacity and capability
is available when reasonably required, and arrangements must be
made to ensure that this obligation is carried through to those
affected rural railways if they become separated from Network
Rail's stewardship.
The lines listed below belong to the categories
described at the beginning of the paragraph above, and we regard
it as essential that they should be adequately safeguarded for
the freight traffic they carry or are likely to carry:
Current integral parts of the freight network
| Oxford North Junction to Bicester Town
| For waste traffic to Calvert |
| Rycroft Junction to Rugeley Trent Valley |
For coal to Rugeley Power Station |
| Stoke on Trent to North Stafford Junction |
To link Crewe to Derby and Loughborough |
| Barnetby to Lincoln | For coal and petroleum from Immingham
|
| Barnetby to Retford | For coal and petroleum from Immingham
|
| Daisyfield Junction to Hellifield | For traffic diverted from the West Coast
|
Potentially part of the freight network
| |
Mickle Trafford Junction to Edgeley Junction
| Traffic from North Wales and to Carrington
|
Potential significant traffic origin
| |
Landudno Junction to Blaenau Ffestiniog
| Slate waste |
Other freight operators may well wish to expand this list.
|
Robert Goundry
Director of Strategy
29 March 2004
| |
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