TRANWSWATCH UK
Comment on the SRA's lobby document
EVERYONE'S RAILWAY: THE WIDER
CASE FOR RAIL
Before making any judgement
about the analysis in "Everyone's
railway", or our comment,
readers may care to take a few
moment to consider the aside
by Stuart Joy, Chief Economist
to British Railways in the 1960's,
who wrote, in his book, The
Train That Ran Away ...... ."Perhaps
some of them did know better
but were prepared, cynically,
to accept the rewards of high
office in the British Transport
Commission and the railways
in return for the unpalatable
task of tricking the government
on a mammoth scale. Those men
were either fools or knaves."
Referring to that Dalgeish comments
in the Truth about Transport:
"there were no libel actions,
but Joy was forced out, too
honest to work with railwaymen".
.....................................................
The first heading of Everyone's
Railway reads "People feel
passionately about railways".
We comment: those who feel that
way are, for most part, trainspotters,
a singularly small proportion
of the nation. In any case it
is not "passionate feelings"
which count in the long run,
but the reality. Turning to
that:
1. Paragraph two of the Forward
gives one of the reasons for
the importance of rail as "nearly
half the population uses the
train at least once a year".
Hopefully the Treasury will
have seen that and laughed since
far from proof of importance
it is proof of precisely the
opposite. At least the statement
is in line with national statistics
which show that less than one
journey in 75 is by surface
rail or less than one in 55
if walking and cycling are excluded
(Table 1.3 of TSGB).
2. The penultimate paragraph
in the Forward points out that
we live in a crowded island
where space is at a premium.
We could not agree more. The
pity of it is that trains need
four times the land of equivalent
road transport. E.g. at Waterloo
50,000 crushed passengers alight
in the peak hour on a weekday.
They could all sit in 1,000
50-seat coaches, sufficient
to occupy one lane of a motor
road. At Waterloo there is room
for 3 or 4 lanes each way. The
waste is lamentable. One consequence
is that trackside and other
industry pours its lorries out
onto unsuitable city streets
past the houses of the poor,
leaving the immense rail network
in South London used to only
a quarter of its potential,
if paved, in the peak and effectively
disused off peak. At Euston
the situation is even more dire.
There 60,000 passengers alight
all day. They could all sit
in 3,000 coaches, each only
40% full. The 3,000 could pass
in 90 minutes in the space available
at Euston but the railway has
run out of capacity.
3. On page 2 the document points
out that congestion charging
may increase the demand for
rail. We comment, how much more
would the demand for public
transport be increased if express
buses could use the rights of
way occupied by rail, offering
seats to all London commuters
at perhaps half the rail fare
and with journey times equal
to or shorter than by train
except for the longest few percent.
4. On page 3 we read that "Rail
is essential to all large-scale
developments". We have
the same on page 19 where it
reads "Rail is critical
to London's economy because
it provides access for a huge
work force to central London...."
We submit that that should be
rephrased to say all large scale
developments and central London
in particular depend on mass
transport. We should then note
that express coaches would do
substantially the same job as
rail at one quarter the cost
while offering 3 to 4 times
the capacity of a railway to
move people, see 2 above.
5. On page 6 we read that "Rail
has a less adverse effect on
the environment than other modes
of Transport". Presumably
the authors have not noticed
that passenger rail returns
the equivalent of 111 passenger
miles per gallon of diesel whereas
an express coach with 20 people
aboard would return 200 if given
the right of way. As to freight,
our calculations show that rail
returns the equivalent of 186
tonne-miles per gallon if the
drag in and out to the rail
head is ignored and 146 if the
drag in and out is included.
That compares with 120 tonne-miles
per gallon for a lorry achieving
8 miles per gallon and delivering
30 tonnes but returning empty.
Combining the data for passengers
and freight shows that if buses
and lorries carried out the
rail function, 20-30% of the
energy required by the trains
would be saved.
6. At the foot of page 7 the
document says "on average
more road users die in accidents
each day than rail passenger
in a year". We comment:
that is a misrepresentation
massive in scale and typical
of the railway lobby - for a
start it ignores the fact that
the roads carry nearly 20 times
the passengers-miles of rail.
The truth is that the casualty
cost per passenger-km for rail
within the envelope bounded
by the ticket barriers is 2
to 3 times the equivalent cost
for people in express coaches
including an allowance for those
injured shortly before boarding
or after alighting. If staff
are included along with those
hurt at level crossings and
as trespassers, then the casualty
cost per passenger-km by rail
is double that for motorways.
See 14 below.
7. On page 11 it says we "cannot
build roads as a way out of
congestion". That is probably
true but it does not mean we
have to have congestion. Instead
we may have congestion charging.
Meanwhile there are 10,000 miles
of railway right of way, often
in corridors of intense demand,
serving the hearts of our towns
and cities which, if paved as
roads, could be used many times
as intensively as can be achieved
by the steel tyred option .
8. On page 12 we read "If
rail had to operate without
subsidy then the necessary fare
rises would price rail beyond
the reach of most travellers".
We ask: does that mean the subsidy
has led to an unsustainable
land use distribution? The answer
is that rail would indeed vanish
tomorrow without subsidy and
central London could not exist
without equivalent services.
However, as noted above, those
services could be provided by
express coaches requiring one
quarter the track and terminal
space of the train. That option
would cut costs by a factor
of four, reduce fuel consumption
by 20-30% and cut casualties
by a factor of at least two.
Additionally, thousands of lorries
and cars currently clogging
city streets would transfer
to the newly paved routes and
many thousands of hectares of
derelict railway land and sidings
would be developed.
9. On page 14 we read "Rail
has a significance to the British
economy that goes well beyond
its market share". We comment
that, contrary to the statement,
rail is beggaring the nation.
At one time the cost of Modernisation,
as originally conceived, rose
to £73 billion, over 5
times the cost of paving the
entire network as roads. To
that we may add the proposed
East Coast High Speed Line at
£36 billion over 40 years,
the Channel Tunnel rail link
at £5.2 billion and operating
subsidy typically running at
1.7 billion per year. The end
product would be a fully modernised,
full sized, working transport
museum offering transport at
4 times the cost of the rubber
tyred option along with great
joy to trainspotters.
10. Page 16 contains a reference
to the value of rail. We encourage
readers to note 2 and 8 above
and that, despite the "value
of rail to the nation",
dereliction surrounds most railway
stations and the platforms of
central London Terminals are
nearly deserted except at peak
times.
11. There are pages extolling
the value of rail to many places.
We encourage readers to substitute
the words "mass transit"
wherever they read the word
"rail" and to remember
that the express coach would
offer travel at one quarter
the cost of the train while
providing 4 times the capacity,
using less fuel and imposing
casualty costs a fraction of
those suffer by rail passengers.
12. On page 21 we read that
"over 100,000 passengers"
use central Birmingham stations
each day. If we allocate all
those equally to the two major
stations, half boarding and
half alighting, we have 25,000
passengers boarding at each
station. If 20% of those are
in the peak hour we get 5,000,
enough to fill 100 50-seat coaches,
a flow so trivial it would be
quite lost on one lane of a
motor road. Page 31 provides
other illustrations of the pathetic
use rail makes of its facilities.
There we find 1,700 daily passengers
using the new £3 million
station at Brunswick. If half
are departing, 25% in the peak,
we get some 210 passengers,
enough to need perhaps 5 motor
coaches but let us make that
10 just to be safe. Meanwhile
the same page boasts of 10,000
passengers in the first month
at Swinton. That amounts to
a one-way flow of perhaps 250
per day needing 12 buses only
40 % full - a quite negligible
matter.
13. Page 23 boasts about 75%
of solid fuels (coal and coke)
being carried by rail. We note
that during the miners' strike
of 1985 some coal freight to
power stations temporarily transferred
to road and stayed there since
it was found to be 25% cheaper
despite coal to power stations
being one of the things rail
does best.
14. Page 34 etc. propagates
the myth that rail is relatively
safe compared with equivalent
road transport. We counter that
by providing an extract from
a Transport Watch paper, dealing
with casualty costs, available
in full on request.
".....................
the data suggests that the casualty
cost per billion vehicle-km
attributable to the Killed and
Seriously Injured, KSI, category
suffered by rail is over 3 times
the cost suffered by bus and
coach on non-urban roads. If
the relatively weakly based
slight casualties are included
then the data suggests casualty
costs by rail per passenger-km
are more than 2.5 times those
by bus or coach. If the bus/coach
data back to 1990 is included,
see table 3, the ratio rail/bus
costs has the range 2.0 to 2.3.
"If trespassers and those
injured at level crossings are
added then the KSI cost by rail
is more than double the corresponding
value for motorways. If pedestrians,
cyclists and people on motorbikes,
classes of people are not often
met with on railway alignments,
are discounted, then road and
rail provide similar KSI casualty
costs but if slight casualties
are included then the cost by
road is 1.4 times the rail cost.
"The most notable detail
from other tables in the source
note is that deaths in train
accidents account for only 11%
of the casualty costs suffered
by passengers between the ticket
barriers and to only 3% of all
rail casualty costs, yet it
is upon deaths in Train Accidents
that almost all rail publicity
is focused."
...................
We comment: those paid to propagate
the railway safety myth (a)
tend to ignore the fact that
only 6% of motorised passenger-miles
are by rail and (b) concentrate
publicity on deaths in train
accidents, a casualty class
which makes an insignificant
contribution to casualty costs
as a whole. Using that sleight
of hand Sir Robert Horton said
in Railtrack's annual report
of 1998/9 that rail is "27
times as safe as road in terms
of fatal and serious injuries"
which is in glaring contrast
with the truth set out above.
Against that background we suggest
statements about safety made
by the railway lobby should
be ignored.
15 .On page 38 we have a chapter
heading which consists of a
quotation from a railway sales
person (the photograph suggests
a sweet girl). She says "I
couldn't quote you the facts
and figures, but I just feel
that the railway is better for
the environment than more and
more roads.........." We
comment, pity about the facts.....
The chapter contains comparisons
of the CO2 emissions for various
modes of transport all of which
we reject as deliberately misleading
or just plain wrong. We provided
the antidote to that at 5 above,
source data and calculations
upon request.
16. Against the above background
we speculate, if Stuart Joy
were the Chief Economist acting
for the rail industry today
would he resign and write as
he then did and as cited at
the start of this note?
17. Meanwhile the magic of rail
marches on, floating above the
facts. E.g. Nigel Harris and
Howard Johnston in the October
1st-14th issue of Rail writing
under the heading "UK plc
would collapse without a decent
rail network, says the SRA"<.b>
cite Richard Bowker
as announcing that "the
debate should not be whether
the figures are right or not,
but over the railway's role...copper-bottomed
analysis not a begging bowl."
Such a remark is breathtaking
both for its folly and its internal
contradiction. Let us hope that
the quotation is wrong, otherwise
we have a rail chief deliberately
setting out to divert the government
from the facts. If the Government
were to base decisions on such
a credo, heaven help us all.
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