TRANSPORT COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS OF 5th NOVEMBER
COMMENT by Transport Watch UK

Rail Passengers Council (FOR 72). During questions Mr Francis pointed out that the number of rail journeys per year was approaching 1 billion. We point out that there are 2,500 stations each with at least two platforms. Hence the 1 billion journeys amounts to at most 550 departures per day per platform requiring less than 30 coaches each containing only 20 people each – a pitiful performance, bearing in mind that rail generally lies in corridors of intense demand. E.g. at Euston the 60,000 passengers alighting daily could be discharged in 90 minutes by 3,000 coaches each containing only 20 people yet the railway has run out of capacity all day.
In paragraph 1.4 of the memorandum an attempt is made to show that the figure of only 6% of all passenger-miles by rail is misleading. That attempt depends on pointing out that the total against which rail is compared includes walking and cycling, so setting rail against ‘journeys’ to the corner shop and walking the dog.
We point out that if motorised modes alone are considered, rail contributed a pitiful 6.5% of all passenger-miles in 2001 (Ref. table 1.1 of Transport Statistics Great Britain). Hence, the Passenger Council’s attempt founders at the first hurdle - walking the dog is a red herring – system wide, rail does indeed make a trivial contribution to the nation’s movement.
We dismiss the rest of the Passengers Council’s comments as ill-informed. These people have made no attempt to find if rail is in anyway essential or to understand that the express coach could provide all London surface rail commuters with seats at a fraction of the cost of the crush conditions provided by the train.
Network Rail (FOR 57). This memorandum is almost entirely devoid of information. One of the few gems is in the summary where we read that the costs are unsustainable but that the target is to reduce these by 20% over three years. We comment – pity they have not noticed that the express coach and lorry would do the same job as the train at one quarter the cost while offering 4 times the capacity of the train etc., given the rights of way.
Strategic Rail Authority (FOR 97). This is a tired memorandum containing little information while simultaneously promoting beliefs which have no basis in fact e.g.
1 Rail is the only mode where congestion can be properly managed - we comment, the crush conditions enjoyed by commuters scarcely support the notion that congestion is being managed to the advantage of passengers. Meanwhile road pricing will soon enable congestion on the roads to be controlled.
2 Rail encourages regeneration - have these people never noticed the endless derelict railway land, often flanked by industry, which grace the hearts of our towns and cities?. Given good road access all those sites would be among the most valuable development land available to the nation. Instead, those sites provide film sets for the End of the World.
3 Rail is important to the economy - we say, rail is important in that it is dragging the economy down - extracting over £4,000 over 10 years from every household in the land when for most a rail journey is a rarity.
4 Rail is a safe mode of transport - forgetting that rail imposes double the casualty cost on its passengers compared with that suffered by passengers in express coaches and that, system-wide, motorways impose half the casualty cost per passenger-mile as is imposed by the train.
5 Environmentally rail is relatively benign – overlooking the fact that the train is no more fuel efficient that a diesel powered car containing two people and that the coach and lorry would do the same job as rail using 20-25% less fuel.

Department for Transport (FOR 17). We deal only with the first words of this memorandum, namely, “The Government believes that rail is a vital national asset…….”
We comment, beliefs and policies founded in fairyland can lead only to disaster, witness the 10 year plan. There the intention was to solve congestion by increasing passenger rail use by 50% and bus use by 10%. In view of the low base from which those modes start it was, and is, obvious that, had the targets been achievable, the effect on congestion would have been negligible; e.g. possibly reducing future traffic from 120% of base values to 118% a change so trivial it would be hard to measure.
Sadly, the magic of rail appears to be impervious to the facts. Consequently we have a programme which, in financial terms, is equivalent to burning the residential accommodation of a city of 2.5 million people, wasting the product of 100 thousand working lives.
Hence we encourage the Committee to deal in the realities of our arithmetic. All of that was tested exhaustively at the Public Inquiry into the West Coast Main Line Modernisation Programme. There, Railtrack’s immensely expensive inquiry team could do nothing in the face of the facts beyond misrepresent what was said – see the annotated closing statement available at www.Transport Watch.co.uk. Hence we are confident that our analysis cannot be overturned in a discussion devoted to finding the truth.
That analysis shows that the rail function could be carried out at one quarter the cost of rail by lorries and express coaches using 20-25 % less fuel** than the train, cutting casualty costs by a factor of two and providing all London surface rail commuters with seats. Additionally, paving the railways would bring endless derelict railway land in the hearts of our towns and cities into use.

** Our memorandum provides a 30-40% reduction based on 1990 data. Subsequently Network Rail provided modern data which yields the range 20-25%.
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Paul F Withrington Director Transport Watch

Transport Watch is an independent association not connected with any business or political party initially funded by a private trust and dedicated to making the best use of land already committed to transport in the interest of the community as a whole.

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