Passengers and Railfreight - how to prioritise

[GRALISTAIR]

Except that, politically, car users have more votes than rail passengers. And the complaints I hear most often from motorists are about lorries clogging up the motorways. And about roadworks delays to repair the damage caused by heavy lorries. Not about a lack of passenger trains that they themselves could use instead of driving.

"Get the freight off the roads on to the railways!" they cry.

All I can say is "I hope so". Freight off roads and onto railways would allow me to die a happy man.

 

[furnessvale]

Unfortunately their are precious few routes where containers would be moving several hundred miles in the UK.
300 miles from London in the Northerly direction gets you north of Newcastle, which means you are already beyond something like 90% of the UK population.

Fortunately for the UK, the majority of freight tonnes/kms for deep sea container traffic entering or leaving the UK, is carried by rail.

When the operators pay full commercial rates for the infrastructure they use, I will care far more about their "operational flexibility".

Given that road haulage currently receives a 70% cross subsidy of its true costs from the obliging private motorists, I presume those sentiments also apply to that industry?

It's a commercial one, but the entire rail industry is inherently non commercial as it receives huge blanket subsidies.

However huge you "think" those subsidies to railfreight are, they pale into insignificance when compared to the subsidies received by the road haulage industry.

 

[HSTEd]

Fortunately for the UK, the majority of freight tonnes/kms for deep sea container traffic entering or leaving the UK, is carried by rail.

Deep sea container traffic to/from ports represent a tiny fraction of UK freight traffic however.

Given that road haulage currently receives a 70% cross subsidy of its true costs from the obliging private motorists, I presume those sentiments also apply to that industry?

The error bars on road haulage subsidies/externalities are absolutely enormous.
And the subsidies on rail freight traffic go far beyond the direct cash subsidies to their operation. For example in terms of additional non-CO2 pollution from obsolete diesel engines, damage to passenger operations with associated deaths from RTAs and pollution etc etc etc.

However huge you "think" those subsidies to railfreight are, they pale into insignificance when compared to the subsidies received by the road haulage industry.

That depends on how you measure them.

But subsidies/externalities for road freight per tonne-km are actually rather small.

This report represents a relatively nuanced picture, especially noting that heavier articulated vehicles are far more efficient in terms of externalities than lighter vehicles.

(It demonstrates externalities from articulated HGVs are only about £6bn per annum, which is the kind of road freight that trains can actually even try to compete against. And they move something like 105 billion tonne km against 8.1 billion for rail.

Which means the equivalent subsidy for rail frieght would only be £460m/a or so, including all of it's externalities)

 

[furnessvale]

This report represents a relatively nuanced picture,

Thanks for the link which I will digest later.

Without even reading it, I tend to take any output on road haulage by Heriot-Watt with a pinch of salt. Maybe I will be surprised. we will see!

 

[HSTEd]

Thanks for the link which I will digest later.

Without even reading it, I tend to take any output on road haulage by Heriot-Watt with a pinch of salt. Maybe I will be surprised. we will see!

I think it boils down to road freight has huge subsidies in cash terms, but simply because they move vastly more frieght than anyone else.

The problem is with our short train lengths and restrictive loading gauge, we are not in a good place for rail freight to really compete - we can't do double stack or TOFC, the two normal ways of reducing freight costs.
And without mile long freight trains it gets even harder.

 

[Photohunter71]

It strikes me that we need both. We need to invest and prioritise passenger traffic of all types (InterCity, regional, commuter, etc) but we also need to invest far more in freight and give that priority in relevant situations.

Felixstowe is a good example of this. It's crackers that our busiest container port is at the end of a branch line that is not double track throughout and is not electrified! And when we do try to tackle we end up doing such a half-baked job that we consider withdrawing the passenger service to save a bit of money. Even when the project finally did get underway in the end the line was still not fully doubled and is still not electrified.

We should have more projects that include freight loops so that more freight can run without clogging up passenger arteries. We should have more electrified cross-country routes to link our major ports with distribution centres. Projects that have a major passenger leaning should do what they can to make things better for rail freight (the Transpennine Route Upgrade is a current example where this has been missed, no doubt passengers will benefit but freight?). I would even go so far as to say that Government should be providing subsidy to encourage greater use of rail freight (for bulk flows anyway).

Whilst rail freight will never manage the penetration of the "good old days" when every station had a parcel office and a goods yard and random wagons would slowly meander from one siding to another on the other side of the country via a host of marshalling yards (that will always remain the preserve of road transport). We need to do better where bulk flows can be identified to ensure that as much of it moves by rail as possible.

I wholeheartedly agree. As Ive stated before, there are opportunities for bulk freight to be rail hauled, and if only those in the rail industry had the vision, they would utilise mothballed and disused freightliner/freight yards for city distribution or from yard to lorry to shop/warehouse transport.

 

[Photohunter71]

All I can say is "I hope so". Freight off roads and onto railways would allow me to die a happy man.

Agree with the freight off roads sentiment, it's only common sense!

 

[Greg Read]

The thought of no freight on rails and all via road, is the thought of nightmares and a living hell on the roads ! you only have to look at the likes of the M25 / A1 etc where there is just a convoy of lorries with a haze of smoke and fumes behind them, delaying car traffic for miles on end! The ideal place for freight is rail, end of, in fact it can be the passenger services that slow the freight up ! The Railway now runs too many passenger trains, it's all very well running say a 4 car every 15 or 20 mins, but it will not take much to delay a lot of traffic through a small fault, I am sure more would rather an 8 car every 30 mins, if it meant better timekeeping, you can timetable a fast at xx10, a semi at at xx20 a slow at xx35 and a freight at the back at xx45, it only takes the first of those to be 10 late or so, and it will snowball for hours !

 

[tbtc]

Agree with the freight off roads sentiment, it's only common sense!

The thought of no freight on rails and all via road, is the thought of nightmares and a living hell on the roads ! you only have to look at the likes of the M25 / A1 etc where there is just a convoy of lorries with a haze of smoke and fumes behind them, delaying car traffic for miles on end! The ideal place for freight is rail, end of, in fact it can be the passenger services that slow the freight up ! The Railway now runs too many passenger trains

It all depends on what passenger services could run if there was no freight (not just the path that one freight train uses but also the subsequent paths at the same time in other hours that don't get used just to permit one freight service a day).

There's a threshold at which it'd be better to have a lorry on the motorway if that removes a certain number of cars from the motorway. I'm not sure what the trade-off should be but, for arguments sakes, if you say eighteen passengers would mean a dozen cars coming off the road at the cost of one lorry being put on the road then maybe that's a price worth paying (the lorry would certainly take up less road space than a dozen cars).

If the determining factor is freeing up road space or restricting pollution or whatever then fair enough but there has to be some kind of quantifiable way of assessing whether a freight train is worth the opportunity cost of the passenger services that would otherwise have run (and taken cars off the road).

 

[Dr Hoo]

Whilst there are obviously some routes with just the odd freight train 'spoiling' a theoretical hourly passenger path these are often relatively uncongested anyway, such as steel at Boston or nuclear traffic on the Cumbrian Coast. Most of the routes 'in contention' such as the Great Eastern Main Line, West Coast, Leicester-London, North London, Basingstoke-Southampton or Westbury-Reading-London seem to have quite a few regular performers every day, sometimes more than one per hour.

 

[HSTEd]

The Railway now runs too many passenger trains, it's all very well running say a 4 car every 15 or 20 mins, but it will not take much to delay a lot of traffic through a small fault, I am sure more would rather an 8 car every 30 mins, if it meant better timekeeping, you can timetable a fast at xx10, a semi at at xx20 a slow at xx35 and a freight at the back at xx45, it only takes the first of those to be 10 late or so, and it will snowball for hours !

But the examples we have seen time and again in the railway since the days of the Modernisation plan, let alone Sprinterisation, is that passengers don't prefer a longer train less frequently.

Spreading your vehicles across more trains drives rapid passenger growth, which takes huge numbers of cars off the road, cars which create far more pollution and congestion than the relative handful of lorries on the freight train ever could.

When freight operators actually embrace modern practices and try and reduce their impact on the railway, I might have some sympathy with them.
But they seem content to act like its the 1950s in terms of train weights and trainset performance.

EDIT:

I went looking for freight train paths from Felixstowe, and apparently it takes 7hr45 just to reach Crewe..... which is already much longer than it would take to reach Crewe on an HGV......

So why are we running five trains a day Felixstowe to Manchester instead of 3 longer ones? And seperate trains to Ditton and other places to avoid shunting operations - whereas with modern technology the trains could simply run coupled as fixed formations and detach anywhere that is convenient.

They clearly aren't worried about a couple of hours of extra waiting time.

 

[PeterC]

I wholeheartedly agree. As Ive stated before, there are opportunities for bulk freight to be rail hauled, and if only those in the rail industry had the vision, they would utilise mothballed and disused freightliner/freight yards for city distribution or from yard to lorry to shop/warehouse transport.

Where are all these disused freight yards? Around London most that I can think of are now under supermarkets or blocks of flats.

 

[LAX54]

It all depends on what passenger services could run if there was no freight (not just the path that one freight train uses but also the subsequent paths at the same time in other hours that don't get used just to permit one freight service a day).

There's a threshold at which it'd be better to have a lorry on the motorway if that removes a certain number of cars from the motorway. I'm not sure what the trade-off should be but, for arguments sakes, if you say eighteen passengers would mean a dozen cars coming off the road at the cost of one lorry being put on the road then maybe that's a price worth paying (the lorry would certainly take up less road space than a dozen cars).

If the determining factor is freeing up road space or restricting pollution or whatever then fair enough but there has to be some kind of quantifiable way of assessing whether a freight train is worth the opportunity cost of the passenger services that would otherwise have run (and taken cars off the road).

Take one Freightliner off the line, then that will not be one extra lorry, you will be looking at something like 40+ lorries (round trip of train) all artics too ! (of course 2 freights...close to 80 to 90 more lorries....)

 

[LAX54]

But the examples we have seen time and again in the railway since the days of the Modernisation plan, let alone Sprinterisation, is that passengers don't prefer a longer train less frequently.

Spreading your vehicles across more trains drives rapid passenger growth, which takes huge numbers of cars off the road, cars which create far more pollution and congestion than the relative handful of lorries on the freight train ever could.

When freight operators actually embrace modern practices and try and reduce their impact on the railway, I might have some sympathy with them.
But they seem content to act like its the 1950s in terms of train weights and trainset performance.

EDIT:

I went looking for freight train paths from Felixstowe, and apparently it takes 7hr45 just to reach Crewe..... which is already much longer than it would take to reach Crewe on an HGV......

So why are we running five trains a day Felixstowe to Manchester instead of 3 longer ones? And seperate trains to Ditton and other places to avoid shunting operations - whereas with modern technology the trains could simply run coupled as fixed formations and detach anywhere that is convenient.

They clearly aren't worried about a couple of hours of extra waiting time.

Take out 4M94 at 0750, 24 loaded, that will be 47 extra lorries on the A14 in one direction, ands the same on the way back later in the day

 

[RLBH]

Take out 4M94 at 0750, 24 loaded, that will be 47 extra lorries on the A14 in one direction, ands the same on the way back later in the day

With one lorry taken as equivalent to 3.5 cars - the normal transport engineering calculation - that's 165 cars. At 1.45 people per car, the UK average, that's 238 people. Felixstowe to Crewe is 214 miles by rail, 217 miles by road.

That's 51,646 person-miles of car traffic that would have to be attracted to rail to offset putting all the containers from 4M94 on to the road. Probably about the same person-miles of rail traffic, since if the route is considerably longer it'll be slower and nobody will use it.

Can you generate 51,646 person-miles along the route? I don't know. But it seems ambitious to me.

 

[Photohunter71]

Where are all these disused freight yards? Around London most that I can think of are now under supermarkets or blocks of flats.

We have one in Figgatemuir (Aka Portobello) Which, with a bit of vision, could provide a decent mid length container transit point from road to rail, as well as handling enterprise sets if as stated there was the vision. I'm sure modern day GUV's and a bit of forethought could see Inverkeithing or Thornton yard turned into a parcel van loading/unloading point for amazon in Dunfermline. Those are small examples I can give. And instead of whacking up blocks of flats just to sit empty as an asset for some investment fund,use that land if adjacent to the rail network for decanting goods to road for final destination transport.

 

[RLBH]

We have one in Figgatemuir (Aka Portobello) Which, with a bit of vision, could provide a decent mid length container transit point from road to rail, as well as handling enterprise sets if as stated there was the vision. I'm sure modern day GUV's and a bit of forethought could see Inverkeithing or Thornton yard turned into a parcel van loading/unloading point for amazon in Dunfermline. Those are small examples I can give. And instead of whacking up blocks of flats just to sit empty as an asset for some investment fund,use that land if adjacent to the rail network for decanting goods to road for final destination transport.

A remarkable number of supermarkets and retail parks sitting on old goods yards have a loading bay at the back of the shop, away from the street. And towards the railway. A siding would easily fit, if someone could figure out a way to get short goods trains in frequently (one delivery overnight isn't acceptable) and economically.

 

[LAX54]

With one lorry taken as equivalent to 3.5 cars - the normal transport engineering calculation - that's 165 cars. At 1.45 people per car, the UK average, that's 238 people. Felixstowe to Crewe is 214 miles by rail, 217 miles by road.

That's 51,646 person-miles of car traffic that would have to be attracted to rail to offset putting all the containers from 4M94 on to the road. Probably about the same person-miles of rail traffic, since if the route is considerably longer it'll be slower and nobody will use it.

Can you generate 51,646 person-miles along the route? I don't know. But it seems ambitious to me.

and that calculation is just one train

 

[RLBH]

and that calculation is just one train

Indeed - looking at RTT for today, Felixstowe alone has 41 possible departures.

 

[LAX54]

Indeed - looking at RTT for today, Felixstowe alone has 41 possible departures.

Think there are about 64 arrivals and departures today, with an average of 25 to 30 vehicles per train and about 1800+ boxes in total...so 1800+ Artics on the road..to and from 1 Port in 24 hours

 

[HSTEd]

Take out 4M94 at 0750, 24 loaded, that will be 47 extra lorries on the A14 in one direction, ands the same on the way back later in the day

Unless the train teleports back to Felixstowe its not really reasonable to count the return lorries

 

[HSTEd]

Indeed - looking at RTT for today, Felixstowe alone has 41 possible departures.

It has 41 paths, how many trains actually ran and how many containers were actually aboard?

 

[LAX54]

It has 41 paths, how many trains actually ran and how many containers were actually aboard?

We have about 60+ today, and so far they have all been fully loaded, some at 1900 feet, and some at 2100 feet

 

[LAX54]

Unless the train teleports back to Felixstowe its not really reasonable to count the return lorries

OH I see, so replace them with lorries from the Port, but use a train to get the boxes back to the Port of course you have to count the return lorries, they will be the 'road' versions of the train back to the ships !

 

[tbtc]

Take one Freightliner off the line, then that will not be one extra lorry, you will be looking at something like 40+ lorries (round trip of train) all artics too ! (of course 2 freights...close to 80 to 90 more lorries....)

Of course a freight train would remove much more than one lorry off the road, but then I’d hope that any passenger train worth running would remove more than a dozen cars off the road too – I’m just trying to use a simple example to show the kind of ratio where we can quantify how “green” a freight train is.

One lorry will take up a lot less space than a dozen cars, so if giving a path to a freight train means taking “x” lorries off the road but putting “12x” cars onto the road then you’d have to assess whether the trade-off was worth it.

We’re not dealing with BR-levels of demand, where there was spare capacity for randomly timed services. Lines are congested, and running non-standard services is a poor use of the capacity we have (that may mean attempting to slow down non-stop services or speed up the slowest services, or potentially remove either, but capacity is much better used where we have relatively “uniform” speeds/ service patterns).

Take a situation where a freight train from a docks (e.g. Felixstowe) to a distribution centre (e.g. Trafford) passes over Anytown Junction at 11:03. In today’s clockface railway that means that the equivalent paths at 10:03. 12:03, 13:03, 14:03 etc are also blocked out to passenger services (i.e. providing that path for one freight train may be at the cost of several passenger services spread over the day).

And then there’s the fact that a Felixstowe – Trafford freight is generally going to return to Trafford empty. Whereas a logistics company like Currie/ Wincanton/ Stobart isn’t going to want to run hundreds of miles empty, so will try to link this contract to a job requiring them to convey goods from Greater Lancashire down to Greater London (since they’d have to pay for the drivers/ fuel anyway, the marginal cost of filling the lorries at another warehouse near Manchester and driving back to a different place near London isn’t going to be as large). Logistics companies use their resources as tightly as they can – an HGV might do a round trip of London – Manchester – Bristol – London. Railfreight is more “there and back”, hence the number of “empties” we have on the rails. A lorry firm couldn’t afford to run half of their mileage as “empty”.

Plus, pretty much all freight is diesel (even if it spends the vast majority of its journey under the wires), whereas passenger trains taking the paths freed by freight could be (much greener) EMUs, which is another environmental consideration.

So it’s not as simple as looking at a freight train and triple-counting the wagons and saying that it’s taken that many lorries off the road. You’d have to look at the number of passengers who could use the same slots (and the number of cars that that would take off/ put on the road). You have to consider the bigger picture.

Freight trains are great, I’m all for things that are better for the environment. But there’s a point at which taking one freight train off the railway (and putting dozens of lorries on the roads) will be better for the environment if it means significantly more cars come off the roads (because we can run several electrified passenger trains with the capacity freed up by to accommodate one non-standard path taken up by a 100% diesel freight train).

And, to be blunt, if putting a hundred lorries on the roads takes over a thousand cars off the roads (because of the improved passenger services that could run if they weren’t constrained by freight) then maybe that’s a trade-off worth doing. And, maybe, having hundreds of lorries on the roads (slowing down motorways) would make the roads less attractive to car drivers and encourage them onto the rails too? Not black and white.

 

[HSTEd]

OH I see, so replace them with lorries from the Port, but use a train to get the boxes back to the Port of course you have to count the return lorries, they will be the 'road' versions of the train back to the ships !

Saying one train leaving and saying it equals many lorries out and many lorries back is not fair.
Saying one train leaving and then returning would be fair. Using the headcode means it looks like you are referring to only one-direction

We have about 60+ today, and so far they have all been fully loaded, some at 1900 feet, and some at 2100 feet

The Port of Felixstowe website does indeed list 62 services per day.
But those are one way journeys.

The actual figure is 31 round-trips, which is the important thing, since you can't count round trips for lorries and single journeys for trains.

EDIT:

Also note that a 2100 feet train, if composed of a typical wagon like an FLA, would only load 44 FEU. Train length is significantly longer than container length because the containers don't go over the couplers for obvious reasons - they would lock up on curves! 1900 feet loads about 40.

Indeed this 2011 study that is quite widely cited in the literature suggests the average container train capacity is about 60TEU/30FEU.
And whilst I accept that the capacity factor may have improved since then, it was much less than 100% at the time.

 

[GB]

I must have dreamed up all those times I have been prepping a freight train and its been 52 54 56 or 58 containers. Certainly there are times when there are less, but on average 1 of our trains will move between 30-32 40fts and 20-26 20fts depending on wagon configuration and weights.

FLA or IKA wagons are not typical intermodal wagons. They are specialised wagons that have a lower floor and allow a 9'6" containers on routes only cleared for 9' or 8'6". They are usually only used these days to strengthen services where normal wagons are not available. A typical intermodal wagon would be FEAs FTA's and the newer FWA wagons etc all of which are 60ft wagons. Back in 2011 the average length train was probably 24 wagons. These days its 30-32.

You asked why send 5 trains to a location instead of 3. Longer trains eat capacity for other users. Adding 2 extra wagons might make the train clear junctions longer affecting the whole timetable. There is also the fact it gives customers options. They might not want their containers to arrive at 1300 but may prefer 1900 as it fits in with their operations easier....and if the trains didn't make money they wouldn't run.

 

[Greybeard33]

And, to be blunt, if putting a hundred lorries on the roads takes over a thousand cars off the roads (because of the improved passenger services that could run if they weren’t constrained by freight) then maybe that’s a trade-off worth doing.

Let us take a concrete example - the Castlefield corridor through Manchester, a highly congested piece of railway, often cited by opponents of rail freight.

Currently there is one freight path per hour in each direction to serve the Trafford Park container terminals (though not between 1700 and 1800, at the height of the evening peak). If those terminals were served by road haulage instead, maybe an additional two passenger trains per hour could run through the corridor in each direction.

Taking 2nd July as a random example, RTT shows that 24 trains actually ran to/from Trafford Park over a 24 hour period (sum of both directions). So an average of one container train per hour. If that train were fully loaded, about 50 artics would be needed to replace it. But in practice some wagons run empty, so let us assume an average of 30 extra lorries per hour, on the roads between Manchester and Felixstowe or Southampton (sum of both directions).

In your words, "maybe that's a trade-off worth doing" if the four additional passenger trains took 300 cars off the roads, i.e. 75 cars per additional train.

But is it even remotely credible that an average of 75 car drivers would switch to each extra train, just because the timing was slightly more convenient than the current services?

Many existing off peak services to/from Manchester carry no more than 75 passengers total. Some of the passengers on the extra services would be cannibalised from existing rail services earlier and later. Some would switch from other public transport services (bus/coach/air) that would probably continue to run. And some would be new travellers, who would not have made that journey at all but for the enhanced service (induced demand). None of these groups would reduce congestion/pollution on the roads at all.

 

[HSTEd]

I must have dreamed up all those times I have been prepping a freight train and its been 52 54 56 or 58 containers. Certainly there are times when there are less, but on average 1 of our trains will move between 30-32 40fts and 20-26 20fts depending on wagon configuration and weights.

30 40' containers and 20 20' containers is 40FEU......
32 40' containers and 26 20' containers is only 45FEU....

So those numbers are comparable.
The average 20' container is light enough that a HGV can load two of them, and you can distribute your containers across lorries to ensure they remain within tare weight restrictions.

FLA or IKA wagons are not typical intermodal wagons. They are specialised wagons that have a lower floor and allow a 9'6" containers on routes only cleared for 9' or 8'6". They are usually only used these days to strengthen services where normal wagons are not available. A typical intermodal wagon would be FEAs FTA's and the newer FWA wagons etc all of which are 60ft wagons. Back in 2011 the average length train was probably 24 wagons. These days its 30-32.

FEA wagons are 40.6m long over the buffers and load 3FEU
Which means a 1900ft formation is about 42 FEU or so.

You asked why send 5 trains to a location instead of 3. Longer trains eat capacity for other users. Adding 2 extra wagons might make the train clear junctions longer affecting the whole timetable.

2 extra wagons is not a meaningful change.
The trains should be double the length, and then the extra time to clear junctions is made up by the reduction in number of trains.
The same number of wagons still cross the junction taking the same amount of time per day.

There is also the fact it gives customers options. They might not want their containers to arrive at 1300 but may prefer 1900 as it fits in with their operations easier....and if the trains didn't make money they wouldn't run.

Then the container could sit around in the depot for 6 hours until they want to pick it up?

The trains do make money for the operator, but that does not mean they are economic.
It just means someone is willing to pay for the trains to run, not that they are a good idea.

 

[6Gman]

We have one in Figgatemuir (Aka Portobello) Which, with a bit of vision, could provide a decent mid length container transit point from road to rail, as well as handling enterprise sets if as stated there was the vision. I'm sure modern day GUV's and a bit of forethought could see Inverkeithing or Thornton yard turned into a parcel van loading/unloading point for amazon in Dunfermline. Those are small examples I can give. And instead of whacking up blocks of flats just to sit empty as an asset for some investment fund,use that land if adjacent to the rail network for decanting goods to road for final destination transport.

"Vision" isn't the issue.

Money is the issue.