Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620
- 639)
WEDNESDAY 7 JUNE 2006
MR TONY
BOSWORTH, MR
SIMON BULLOCK,
MR RICHARD
DYER AND
MR PETER
LIPMAN
Q620 Dr Turner: If I can turn to
getting passengers out of cars or out of planes and on to trains,
it seems from your memo that you do not approve of high speed
rail links, yet these are quite successful in taking passengers
away from European flights and onto high speed rail links like
Eurostar or the TGV to the south of France. Can you explain exactly
why it is that you are opposed to this? Is it your calculation
of the CO2 emissions involved in constructing the links
that is just not adding up because the carbon savings as compared
to air transport should be quite high?
Mr Dyer: Can I ask which submission
that was? Was it Sustrans' or Friends of the Earth's?
Q621 Dr Turner: It may have been
Sustrans'.
Mr Lipman: They are Friends of
the Earth. I am Sustrans.
Q622 Dr Turner: You are Sustrans?
Mr Lipman: Yes. What we are concerned
about is high speed travel, whether it is on a train, in a plane
or on a boat. High speed travel is polluting and we do not think
with increasing levels of population that it is going to be sustainable.
The work on the relative pollution levels is very interesting.
I have already forwarded to the Clerk some work being done by
academics on comparisons which come down to comparisons of loading
factors. Certainly with Eurostar, for example, which tends often
to be very empty, a recent calculation done by the Environmental
Change Institute at Oxford University showed that it was more
polluting to get to Paris by Eurostar than it was to jump on a
full Ryanair flight. That is really worrying in a way because
it says we do not have a clean way of travelling, or a clean way
of travelling fast and far. That comes back to the fundamental
point: maybe we do not have that any more and fundamental behavioural
change is needed. Certainly one of the major problems about high
speed rail investment is the energy infrastructure cost which
is absolutely enormous.
Mr Dyer: We take a slightly different
view. Certainly on what you are saying about the relative emissions
the figures I have seen are very positive.
Q623 Dr Turner: You mean positive
in favour of high speed rail?
Mr Dyer: Yes, positive in favour
of high speed rail. The figures we have seen from Europe where
they can abstract passengers from flights and virtually result
in the close-down of certain routes are very positive in that
respect. In terms of the UK we would want to be convinced that
it was going to result in significant modal shift rather than
creating new journeys per se if a high speed line was proposed.
It is also worth making the point that more generally much could
be done without building new infrastructure to improve rail's
attractiveness, particularly if you are looking at the EU as a
whole. If you try and travel from London to somewhere in Europe
it is often extremely difficult even to find out about the services
available and it is certainly very difficult to book a through
ticket. You cannot do it on the web in one go like you can if
you are booking Ryanair. Those sorts of things can be sorted out
much more cheaply and without damaging the environment at all
and would make rail much more attractive, and also things like
making it easier to work on the train so it is a more attractive
way of travelling for doing business, more like a mobile office,
where the plane, the alternative, is not really a good place to
do business very often because you do not have much space. I think
there is potential there for doing quite a lot to improve rail's
attractiveness. When you take into account the fact that something
like 45% of EU flights are under 500 kilometres there is a lot
of modal substitution that could be done even with the network
that we have got if it was better packaged and better promoted.
Q624 Dr Turner: But we have already
got a situation where people want to travel. Unless you can wean
them off it that is very difficult. We have already got Eurostar
trains. They are fine for working on. If you want to plug your
laptop in it is all there. However, you disagree about the relative
carbon outputs. Why is this? Are you putting different assumptions
into your calculations?
Mr Bullock: It is about load factors,
is it not? If you were to compare full rail with full air rail
comes out better.
Mr Bosworth: The figures which
we use are the ones from the Commission for Integrated Transport's
report on the relative environmental impacts of short haul.
Q625 Dr Turner: They are not your
calculations then?
Mr Bosworth: No. The figures are
from the Commission for Integrated Transport and they are looking
at a comparison between plane, rail and car on journeys such as
London to Manchester, London to Newcastle, Edinburgh or Glasgow
and they show that rail is a significantly lower emitter in terms
of carbon dioxide per passenger kilometre than plane, and also
a fair bit lower than the car.
Q626 Dr Turner: It seems to be quite
positive then. I am a little confused.
Mr Lipman: There are significant
differences in assumptions on load factors. The Commission for
Integrated Transport's and Government's factors tend to assume
that trains are 70% full and the work that we have been looking
at takes some actual figures which tend to be a lot lower. There
are very crowded commuter trains during the morning and evening
but a lot of the trains are running a lot more empty during the
day. It comes down to a load factor question very often.
Q627 Dr Turner: The trains on my
line are 150% full.
Mr Lipman: What time of day do
you use them?
Q628 Chairman: We have one practical
example, do we not, of where there has been some modal shift,
which is on the London to Paris and London to Brussels route where
there are now significantly more people travelling by train than
there were 15 years ago and significantly fewer people travelling
by air, so it would be possible presumably to test the assumptions
on load factors on that route.
Mr Lipman: There are also significantly
more people making those trips and that is one of the fundamental
points about setting up high speed rail. If we now were to do
a new north-south high speed rail line in this country the indications
are that you would get more people making that trip. It comes
back to the fundamental point: are we going to encourage people
to travel further and faster or are we going to say it is not
sustainable any more?
Q629 Chairman: You do not know what
has caused the increase. With the economic growth that has taken
place, certainly in the last 14 years, in Britain and to a lesser
extent in France and on the continent, there would probably have
been an increase in journeys merely resulting from that. How you
prove the additionality point seems to me less important than
the fact that here we have a concrete example of where there has
been modal shift, a pretty rare one but it has happened and it
has happened between planes and trains. The load factor therefore
on this route could be tested.
Mr Lipman: Yes, it could be tested.
Q630 Chairman: Do you happen to know
whether that is 70% or not?
Mr Lipman: The load factor on
the train between London and Paris is less than 70%, significantly
less. I do not know the Brussels figure. However, I would argue
by analogy from the old "predict and provide" assessment,
which is that if you build extra lanes people drive more because
they are there and the M25 is the classic demonstration of that,
that really it is exactly the same with trains.
Q631 Chairman: Hang on: that does
not make much sense. If we have already got lots of spare capacity
which is not really used, there is already, as it were, the equivalent
of extra lanes on the trains according to your information.
Mr Lipman: According to my information.
Q632 Chairman: Okay, so what would
be the point of putting on extra trains in that case if there
are already empty trains?
Mr Lipman: No; I was talking about
a new north-south high speed rail link. What I am saying is yes,
there is plenty of spare capacity at the moment between London
and Paris.
Chairman: And on the evidence we have
on the London to Paris route a new north-south high speed rail
link would knock out the aircraft.
Q633 Dr Turner: We have got the lead
there. What about London to Edinburgh or London to Glasgow?
Mr Lipman: In terms of load factors?
I do not know the answer to that.
Q634 Dr Turner: You are saying that
high speed links are carbon inefficient because of the load factors
that are actually happening, but I suspect that load factors on
routes such as London to Glasgow are very high.
Mr Lipman: I am talking about
new high speed links. Once you have built a rail line I would
encourage maximum use of it but I am talking about the enormous
infrastructure costs of building new links.
Q635 Dr Turner: The calculation would
be for a London to Scotland high speed link, which, if it was
as effective in cutting journey times as the TGV is, would, I
think, virtually knock out air transport between London and Scotland
altogether. Would there not be a gain? Have you made that calculation?
Mr Lipman: No. I do not know that
you can make that assumption at all, that it would knock out air
travel.
Dr Turner: Given the hassle at either
end of catching a plane, I think you could.
Q636 Chairman: The construction of
another high speed line for longer UK journeys would release more
capacity for commuter journeys by rail, would it not?
Mr Lipman: Yes.
Q637 Chairman: So you might get some
more modal shift from car to train on shorter journeys at the
same time?
Mr Lipman: You may well.
Mr Dyer: There is also potentially
more room for freight, which would be a positive outcome. If I
could add a couple of things to what has been said, on the environmental
impact I think we have to bear in mind also that there is the
potential for high speed rail, which is going to be electrically
powered, to be powered by renewably generated electricity, which
we do not have with aircraft, so it could be virtually totally
carbon neutral.
Q638 David Howarth: When you were
talking about the barriers to people using trains I was hoping
you were going to mention the point that the Transport Committee
has just been talking about, which is the opacity of the ticketing
system of domestic trains.
Mr Dyer: I was looking forward
to a separate question on that.
Q639 David Howarth: Do you think
that that really does discourage people from using trains compared
to other modes and, if so, what should be done about it?
Mr Dyer: Most definitely. I have
not read the full report, but the gist of it, that it is an expensive,
confusing mess, we would certainly agree with. I use the trains
a lot. Travelling down this morning from Yorkshire, the announcer
gave me I think six alternatives and that is just for advance
purchase tickets that could not be used on this train if they
had the wrong date on them, and that is just one company, of course.
It is a nightmare and I think it does put people off. The prices
also put people off. There are some remarkably good deals around
but the one that is always quoted, the Manchester to London £200
open return if you turn up on the day, is just extortionate and
probably more expensive than anything else in Europe. Turning
to what we want done, we heard National Rail cards mentioned earlier.
I think the Government should put more into looking into that,
which is quite common on the continent. They should lay down regulations
that give standard names and conditions for tickets. If you go
to Kings Cross you have got one condition on what ticket you can
use at a certain time. If you walk 100 yards down the road to
St Pancras, you might be doing the same journey to Leeds and it
is a completely different condition and a different name for the
ticket. It is ridiculous. Those are the three things we would
want to see through regulation.
Mr Bosworth: If I could add one
point to that about the National Rail card, you made the point,
Chairman, that there are quite a number of trains with spare capacity
and if we had something like a National Rail card which would
cut the price of off-peak travel we could maybe see a lot of that
spare capacity used up if the price was cheaper.
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