Memorandum from North-East Combined Transport
Activists' Roundtable (NECTAR) (FT 34)
INTRODUCTION
The North East Combined Transport Activists'
Roundtable [NECTAR] is an open, voluntary, umbrella body, established
to provide a forum in which the many organisations with an interest
in transport in all its forms can develop a co-ordinated view
on contemporary transport issues. NECTAR provides opportunity
for the exchange of news, studies and information to organisations
which support the use of sustainable, integrated transport and
land-use policies designed to reduce the need to travel, and to
minimise its environmental impacts.
Before responding to questions posed in the
"Call for Evidence" document, we have three general
points to make. In part, these repeat points made in our submissions
to two earlier stages of the Ports Policy process—one in
August 2006, the other in October 2006:
(a) We think that, quite apart from measures
to deal more efficiently with transport of freight of all types,
the UK must work far harder to reduce the number of food miles
that arise from present distribution of supermarkets and other
food retail outlets.
(b) We consider that far more should be done
on a national, if not an international, level to discourage air
travel of all types, and thereby to reduce the particularly high
proportion of CO2 emissions (and others) arising from air transport.
(c) All transport modes produce adverse emissions,
and some are more congestion-prone than others. If sea-borne traffic
to and from the UK continues to grow—or even if it stays
much the same as now—we think that mileage between port
and final destination, be it rail-borne or carried by lorry, should
be as low as possible. This means that ports in the north should
be developed (especially in the Tees and the Tyne areas) to take
over some of the work now done at ports in the increasingly-congested
South-East of England.
QUESTIONS
1. Is the Department's investment in logistics
programmes—including the Sustainable Distribution Fund—good
value fro money and meeting the objectives?
I do no think that we can usefully offer a reply
to this.
2a. International distribution patterns involving
air freight increase carbon dioxide by up to 30 times that of
sea transport. What more can be done to promote modal shift from
road and air freight to inland waterway, shipping and rail?
The opening statement does not seem naturally
to lead to the question below it, but—as we commented in
our response last year to the "Ports Policy Review"—we
think that air freight should either remain a very small part
of the over-all total or be removed completely.
So far as modal shift from road to rail is concerned,
we think that now is the time to:
(i) increase the loading-gauge of many main-line
rail routes to W10 or W12, the better to carry container traffic
that arrives by sea at so many UK ports;
(ii) support development of northern ports
(especially the current proposal to enlarge Teesport, already
equipped with good rail infrastructure), to minimise onward mileage
of imported goods by whichever mode they are carried; and
(iii) make the air freight industry pay full
fuel duty and an environmental tax.
2b. How can the Government encourage and
incentivise further efficiency improvements?
Possibly by reviving the system of financial
grants to any rail initiative (for new sidings, for track-upgrading,
for gauge-widening, for electrification in some cases, and for
better-quality goods vehicle purchase) that would demonstrably
remove from the roads a stated number of lorry-movements, or even
avoid some air-freight journeys.
This could be seen either as pump-priming, to
start off a process that became self-financing, or as a continuing
necessary financial prop to cover direct costs of a service that
would, in the long run (say 20 years or more), benefit the environment
as a whole, even if, at operator level, it was unlikely to cover
costs.
3. Air freight in the South-East is forecast
to grow from 2.2 million tonnes pa in 2003 to 14 million tonnes
by 2030.
(a) Has
the Department adequately planned for the capacity and access
implications of this very significant growth?
(b) How
will transport networks need to adjust to serve the growing air-freight
market?
We are extremely disappointed to see yet another
example of "predict and provide". We had hoped that
it was a planning approach that had at last been put to rest.
Forecasts are notoriously hazardous, even if they concern processes
that would benefit a lot of people and improve the environmental
health of the area in which they live. That any government would
think of giving in so tamely to a statistical projection that,
if implemented, would do grave damage to an area already so much
worse environmentally than most other areas of the British Isles
alarms and concerns us greatly.
It is difficult for us to judge whether the
Department has planned adequately or not, since we do not really
know whether such plans are based on acceptance of this trend,
or—in our opinion, far better—on a vigo-rous campaign
against growth of air freight, nation-wide and not just in the
South-East. Such a campaign should feature rapid growth of alternative,
land-based, sustainable modes of transport, and if that calls
for unlooked-for expenditure, we think that it is the air-freight
industry that should be made to pay this.
Insofar as the Department is not taking effective
steps to discourage air freight to and from all parts of the UK,
we consider that it is failing in its duty to everybody to improve
the environment, including, of course, maintaining and improving
air-quality in general.
4a. Should the Department have more responsibility
for planning and delivering integrated infrastructure which might
promote "free movement of goods"?
This question seems to combine two ideas unacceptably.
"Integrated infrastructure" presumably means one or
other of "road-plus-rail", "fully-linked port rail
facilities/road exchange areas" or similar. Where the "free
movement of goods" (as distinct from what other sort?) comes
into the picture we do not understand. But we do, in principle,
support the idea that transfer of goods to and from cargo-ships
for whatever purpose and whatever journeys should be as smooth
and as pollution-free as is humanly possible.
4b. How is this to be balanced with the Department's
other commitments?
We are not in a position to answer this.
4c. What should be the priorities for the
Transport Innovation Fund productivity stream?
Another question that hides behind jargon: "transport
innovations" as such should now be those that significantly
add to over-all sustainability—in other words, those that
need minimal or no extra fuel consumption, on the ground that
their introduction allows reduction of energy-needs, thanks to
lower car/lorry use, or its total elimination, for instance. Possible
examples here could be the network-wide loading-gauge enhancement
referred to above (to W10/W12 levels) and the greater exploitation
of the potential of the Channel Tunnel to take far more rail-borne
freight than it does now.
Urban electric tramway proposals, turned down
recently on cost grounds, may not have been under a TIF banner
as such, but their expected effects in terms of modal shift, and
of visible reduction in car-journey figures, would lead to lower
use of non-renewable fuels. This, and not immediate profit-and-loss
considerations, should always be a strong TIF priority.
5a. How successfully has the Government influenced
European negotiations regarding freight operators?
To judge by the minimal quantity of rail freight
now using the Channel Tunnel, compared even with a few years ago,
the Government, insofar as it has been a party to negotiating
how much to charge for access to the tunnel, has had no success
at all.
5b. How could the Government help to ensure
a level playing-field between UK and overseas freight companies?
Partly by ensuring that rail freight access
charges reflect the needs of rail freight operators, and partly
by investing in better rail infrastructure (including loading-gauge
enhancement) and charging-regimes that promote Channel Tunnel
through freight operations.
6a. How effective are the Freight Quality
Partnerships in improving the local experience of freight and
deliveries?
Some good ideas are emerging from the Tyne and
Wear Partnership, in that it has published a map of preferred
HGV routes around Tyneside. But in Tees-side, where rail freight
is particularly heavy now, the Freight Partnership appears to
be moribund.
[NECTAR is represented on both partnerships.]
6b. Are the restrictions on night-time deliveries
still appropriate?
6c. What impact would weakening the restrictions
have on quality of life and other factors?
We do not know what form such restrictions take,
but we would not want any increase in, or introduction of, night-time
deliveries. We would not wish for any noise nuisance to local
inhabitants to be either introduced or increased, with disruption
to the working-conditions and working hours of all involved, be
they lorry/train drivers or ground (un)loading staff.
October 2007
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