Rail Freight Interchanges: What Next?

In July and August two Strategic Rail Freight Interchange (SRFI) proposals have been refused planning permission following on from major planning inquiries: Radlett and Kent International Gateway (KIG). To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one rail freight interchange may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness!

Where does this leave plans to develop a network of SRFIs as a foundation for significant rail freight growth?

The Context

Strategic Rail Freight Interchanges are large facilities which include both rail connected warehousing and an intermodal terminal. A good example is DIRFT, near Rugby.

It is recognised that developing more distribution centres with rail access could unlock huge modal shift from road to rail.  For distribution companies and retailers locating at an SRFI gives them the best possible choice between road and rail.  This is why SRFIs and rail freight terminals are strongly supported by government transport and planning policy.

The Recent Planning Decisions

Both proposals were in areas with significant impacts on the countryside and local communities: Radlett on the Green Belt, KIG impacting a nearby Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and heritage areas.

Clearly there are very few locations in England where you can build a huge development of warehouses and rail facilities without having a major impact on the local environment and communities. This is recognised in the planning process, and SRFIs can still gain planning permission provided they can demonstrate the need for the facility and that there are no suitable but less harmful alternative sites available.

Kent International Gateway

KIG’s “needs case” was partly based on an assumption that the facility would be used to intercept goods from Europe and consolidate them in warehouses for onward distribution by road and rail. However, the planning inspector reported that he was not satisfied that the proposal would function as an SRFI in this way.

The KIG argument is related to a strategy known as “port centric distribution” where National Distribution Centres would be located at ports rather than, as today, being concentrated in the Midlands. The inspector did not accept that this would be applicable to KIG. His key concerns appear to be the location of the terminal (not at a port), and the lack of precedent for distribution by rail from port centric facilities.

Nor did the inspector agree that KIG would be well placed to function as an SRFI serving London and the South East. In particular, he cited the Strategic Rail Authority’s (SRA) SRFI policy which suggested that such facilities should be near to the M25. More on the SRA policy later!

As a result the inspector turned down the appeal and the Secretary of State agreed, and so planning permission has been refused.

Radlett Freight Interchange

This proposal can be regarded as being particularly unfortunate, as it has been the subject of two major planning inquiries. Following the second inquiry the planning inspector recommended that the appeal be upheld and the SRFI be given planning permission, but the Secretary of State disagreed and denied the appeal.

There was general agreement that the facility was needed and would function as a true rail freight interchange, but one of the key issues at both inquiries was whether a less harmful suitable alternative site could be developed as an SRFI.

The developer was required to undertake a major assessment of potential alternative sites. Any location near to a railway was examined over a huge area of south East England.

Again, a key influence was the SRA SRFI policy which suggested that 3-4 SRFIs would be required to serve London and the South East. Given the location of Radlett, the search area for alternative sites covered the North West quadrant of the region around London.

While the inspector agreed that there were no suitable alternative sites which would potentially have less impact, the Secretary of State (SofS) disagreed. He found that a potential SRFI at Colnbrook, near Heathrow, could have less impact.

Colnbrook was the location of a much earlier SRFI proposal known as LIFE, which was refused following an inquiry. The Radlett team rejected Colnbrook as an alternative site largely because it would be counter to local planning policy, particularly concerning the “strategic gap” between Slough and London. The inspector agreed.

However, the SofS disagreed because other local plans mention the potential for an SRFI at Colnbrook:

“The Secretary of State considers that if an application were to be made for a SRFI at Colnbrook of about the size indicated in evidence to the Radlett inquiry, then harm to the Green Belt might, subject to testing in an alternative sites assessment, be found to be significantly less than the harm caused by the Radlett proposal. ”

While there is no planning application for an SRFI at Colnbrook, a developer is working up plans for the site.

The Good News

The good news is that the Secretary of State has made it clear that support for the development of SRFIs is undiminished.

There are several major SRFIs currently being planned, some of which serve the areas of the refused application.

Significantly, SRFI developments of over 60 Hectares will be considered as “nationally important infrastructure projects” and dealt with through the new processes introduced by the last government (and currently being amended by the present government). This may provide more clarity on the needs issue in particular.

Our View

The two decisions cannot be seen as a shift of Government support away from SRFIs. Rather, they reflect the difficulty of allowing SRFIs to develop in Green Belt or other sensitive areas.

However, the decisions should be seen as an opportunity to reassess the way in which need and alternative sites are assessed.

The decision regarding Radlett is particularly unfortunate. In distribution terms, Colnbrook would serve a very different market to Radlett. Radlett would have been well placed to serve businesses and communities in Hertfordshire and North London. This is already an important area for the distribution industry, attracted by access to the A1(M) and M1 as well as the M25 and London. But the scheme proposers could not make this case as the SRA policy would suggest that there is not demand for both Colnbrook and Radlett.

The other reason for concern at the Radlett decision is the idea that a viable site can be turned down on the basis that an alternative sight might be developed which might have less impact. If the remaining alternative site fails to be developed, where does that leave the strategy for rail freight? The result may be ad hoc development of individual or small clusters of warehouses served 100% by road.

KIG is perhaps different. A visit to the site illustrates that, notwithstanding the M20, A20 and HS1, the area is predominantly rural and, to be subjective, pretty. The needs case is not helped by the absence of major distribution developments in the area and a feeling that the location is neither near a port nor well suited for access to London. There will be many in the distribution industry as well as local communities who feel that the right decision has been made in this case.

Time For A New Approach?

Our key concern is that major planning decisions continue to be influenced by a policy published by the SRA six years ago – the SRA SRFI Policy. This policy was based on theoretical research into distribution flows and patterns. At the time it was not clear exactly how the theoretical approach had been applied, and there was little consultation with the distribution industry. Arguably the very basis of the SRA research should now be questioned, given the rapid growth of rail use by retailers and potential moves towards port centric distribution.

The SRA policy provides an impression that there is an intrinsic and limited demand for rail freight terminals. An alternative view is that the demand for change in distribution  is lead by retailers and logistics companies who are constantly refining their operations. This is currently leading to demand for well located bigger distribution buildings. If these buildings are developed with good access to rail freight services, rail freight market share will grow. If not, then we will be locked in to road based distribution for another generation.

Looking at demand this way, the argument is turned on its head: if the distribution industry needs new buildings, such buildings should be located at or near rail terminals. Rather than limiting such developments to a certain number in each region, that number being determined by top down state planning processes, the alternative view would allow for more SRFIs to be developed provided that demand for distribution space could be demonstrated.

Demand forecasts for SRFIs tend to be based on models which assume that past trends continue, and are not necessarily well suited to forecasting future changes such as portcentric distribution. Any new approach should be rooted in the changing needs of the distribution sector.

Obviously there are more issues than this, but our clear view is that it is time to move on from the SRA’s SRFI strategy and to bring the planning process closer to emerging distribution strategies.

Ian Brooker – Peter Brett Associates

Chris Geldard – Geldard Consulting

Andrew Spence-Wolrich – The Spence-Wolrich Partnership

Intermodal Terminal Solutions

10 Things I Love About Crawley

Three years ago I moved to Crawley rather reluctantly and for personal reasons. Well I have to say I really like the place. Here are some reasons why.

1: Crawley Parks

Crawley has some genuinely lovely parks. My favourite is the Memorial Gardens, right in the middle of our shopping centre. The planting and landscaping is really good, and it is a popular place to hang out in the sunshine. Special mention also of  Tilgate Park – a vast area which includes a lake, a mini zoo, wonderulf gardens, and the beginning of a forest.

2: Metrobus

Unusually for a town of its size in SE England, Crawley has an excellent bus service. We even have an extensive network of guided busways – which are fairly pointless but are used by some very comfortable and frequent buses. Because a key function of the buses is to take workers to and from Gatwick Airport, the good service levels continue to late at night, with some buses running 24 hours per day. Fares are reasonable and there is a good range of season tickets.

3: Good Train Services

There are four stations in Crawley. Three Bridges and Gatwick Airport have excellent train services to lots of destinations. I don’t really need a timetable to pick up a train at any time to London or Brighton, and trains run through the night. I can get to London in around 40 minutes in an air conditioned train. And the trains are very reliable.

4: Close To Brighton

Its a good reason to live here: I can get to Brighton easily in less than half an hour. We spend a lot of our time there, just hanging around and enjoying the atmosphere of England’s coolest city.

6: Crawley Shops

If you want chain stores, Crawley is a good compact shopping centre with all of the usuals. County Mall is a decent sized modern shopping mall. There are virtually no independents in the town centre, but every community in Crawley has a local shopping centre, built from the 1950s to 1970s. Many of these include wonderful independent shops including specialist Asian food stores, music shops, and even a specialist model ship shop.

7: Multiculturalism

Crawley has a much higher percentage of people from minority communities than most towns in the South East. We have a very large Asian community, including Muslims and Hindus. We also have some more unusual communities such as the Brazilians and Portuguese, Mauritians, Irish, and even the UK’s main concentration of people from Diego Garcia. They all make a unique contribution to Crawley, of which the Brazillian cafes and new Hindu temple are good examples. My hairdresser is Mauritian. She says “There is no racism in Crawley. We all get on very well and its a fantastic place to live.”. I wouldn’t say there is no racism, but one thing any visitor will notice is that the groups of people you see around town are often multi racial.

7: Egalitarianism

I’ve seen surveys that suggest that Crawley is the 4th most equal town in the UK. I puzzled about this for a while. It means that the gap between rich and poor is smaller than in most places. I think this is for two reasons: we have very low unemployment; but we also have very few very well off people – there are no big houses for them, so they mainly live in the Sussex countryside around us. It means we have a distinct lack of high calss clothing stores, posh restaurants, and 4 wheel drive cars. If that’s not a good reason to live here, I don’t know what is!

8: The Hawth

The Hawth is one of the better regional theatres, but we rarely go to the theatre there. But I love the various festivals and free events such as the Beer and Folk Festival, and the Mela. Its a great facility set in a wood with open air and indoor stages. The Hawth is 300m from my front door (although to be fair that would involve walking across a railway line).

9: The Library

Shortly after I moved in a new library opened. Modern, airy, and busy, it holds regular events and has made big efforts to attract young people. Best of all there;s a great coffee shop there too. This year the library won an RIBA award.

10: The Countryside

Around Crawley there are hundreds of hectares of open space. Nearby we have St. Leonards Forest and various parks and gardens such as Nymans. Further afield is the south Downs and Ashdown forest (one of my favourite wild places).

In general Crawley has a friendly non-snobbish atmosphere and is a good example of how a new town can be developed succesfully. Its not to everyone’s taste but take a closer look before you knock it.

Trials and Tribulations (1)

This was a bad one. I had been trying for over a year to get a contract to carry starch from Corby to Aberdeen – its an ingredient of paper. I knew the client well and got on with him well. Eventually I persuaded him to do a trial with us.

The starch was in “big bags” weighing a tonne each, so handling was easy and a VDA wagon would do the job on rail. I cannot remember which terminal we used to load the starch down south, but I arranged for it to be unloaded in Aberdeen by our own terminal and collected by a truck on contract to the final customer up there. We could achieve a 24 hour transit, but the client said we had two days. But the load was important and so at all costs it mustn’t take more than two days. I was to call him if there was any problem.

It is an important rule for me always to be present at both the loading and the unloading of a trial load. But Aberdeen was a long way, and this was only a load of starch. What could possibly go wrong?

The day of the trial arrived and I watched the big bags being fork lifted across to the VDA. all very smooth and off went the wagon. I rang the terminal in Aberdeen and warned them of the important trial coming their way. I even contacted the local loads inspector to ask him to take a look when it arrived. I kept a close eye on the transit using TOPS – our highly advanced computerised tracking system (this was 1984 – 15 years before sat nav!).

On the day that arrival was scheduled I saw on TOPS that the wagon was in Aberdeen and its status had changed from “loaded” to “empty”. Great! Just to be sure I rang the terminal and the foreman there confirmed having seen the wagon unloaded with no damage. Brilliant!

I am not sure if I tried to ring the client or if I was expecting him to call me, but basically we did not make contact.

Two weeks passed by, and I was plucking up courage to call him and ask for another load. Then I got a phone call. From Great Yarmouth. “Mate, we’ve got a VDA full of starch here, and we think it might be yours.” My blood ran cold? What? How? Surely it can’t be . . . .

It turns out that the nice people in Aberdeen had wrongly entered “empty” for my wagon. Since then it had been wandering around the network, full of starch, and waiting for another load. The man I rang and asked about the trial had seen a different wagon unloaded – of calcium carbonate, not starch.

I had to ring the client who promptly hit the roof. End of another bright prospect.

Message to anyone involved in rail freight: always watch your trial being loaded AND unloaded. Don’t trust anyone else!

I Was A Speedlink Sales Executive!

From 1985 to 1988 I did one of the most unusual and interesting jobs in the railway industry. I was a Speedlink Sales Executive.

About a dozen of us covered the country, working from home but supported from regional offices. We were provided with a company car (would you believe my first was a yellow Vauxhall Chevette), and were given a considerable degree of freedom. Essentially we were sales men and women – reps on the road. My patch stretched from the Thames to Northamptonshire, across to Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire.

The support we were given was excellent. British Rail was very keen to make a success of Speedlink, and we were given external sales training and were properly managed by sales managers who set and monitored targets.

I think what was unique about our job was that we didn’t really have a product to sell. Every customer needed a bespoke product. The only thing in common was that we were offering freight transport using rail as the main mode.

For example, my patch had virtually no manufacturers or distribution centres with rail connections. To get goods from A to B I had to include collection by road, transfer to a rail wagon somewhere, the rail haul using mainly Speedlink’s wagonload network,  and then delivery by road at the other end. None of this was “off the shelf”. There was no brochure, no price list.

Our approach was this:

1. Find a customer. BR employed some market research techniques, but our main approach was excellent local knowledge, searches of directories, and a lot of soul destroying cold calling by telephone.
2. Persuade the customer to see you. Not easy. They were normally busy and very happy with the service they got from road hauliers.
3. Meet the customer and find out about his or her business. What did they make, what did they move, from and to where? In what quantities? How is it being moved currently?
4. Decide on the spot whether rail could potentially play a role in their supply chain. This really meant having a thorough understanding of both the road haulage market and the capabilities of rail. Price was obviously key, and only rarely would customers tell us what they were paying. So we had to estimate the road price and decide whether rail would be likely to compete.
5. Sell the concept of rail to the customer – presenting the range of services available and the benefits of changing mode.
6. If rail could play a role and the customer was interested, we would go away and pull together a package of services including finding a road haulier for collection, getting a quote from them, similarly for a rail terminal, similarly at the other end. We would decide on the best wagon to use, and find a suitable Speedlink service from our timetables. Hopefully there would be enough money left to get some revenue for the rail operation plus, ideally, a discount for the customer over his existing prices.
7. Go back to the customer with a proposal / offer. Negotiate!
8. Generally we would offer a trial run, often for free. For the trial the sales exec. would be on site to see the wagon loaded, and would travel to the other end over night to see that unloading went smoothly too.

The packages we offered were a unique combination, often involving five or six different companies (collection haulier, loading terminal, wagon provider, unloading terminal, delivery haulier). For that reason, while many of our colleagues in British Rail could spend their entire career and not deal with any company outside the organisation, we were adept at dealing not only with our private sector customers but also our private sector partners in the terminals, haulage, and wagon leasing industries. The partnerships formed were very open: any company could front the operation. So a haulier or a terminal operator could be the prime mover, and simply come to us for a rail haulage price. As sales execs our job was as much to provide support for terminals and wagons operators as it was to sell direct. At the same time we needed a good feel for rail operations and services, materials handling techniques, and logistics in its wider sense so that we could identify and home in on any opportunities to add value.

I will definitely come back to my time as a Speedlink Sales Executive in later blogs – stores about the terminals on my patch, and why most of my trial runs went disastrously wrong!

Speedlink Nostalgia

I was researching a future blog post about Speedlink when I came across this wonderful promotional video that Speedlink commissioned back in 1984. Enjoy!

Memories of an Old Railwayman

Well, that’s me. I’m nearly 50 you know! Random memories occasionally pop into my head. Does anyone remember these international rail freight operations:

Transfesa Onion Traffic From time to time when I was driving around my sales patch in the mid 1980s I would come across one of these wagons, usually sitting in complete isolation in the middle of an otherwise empty freight yard. I think they were two axle affairs, coloured Transfesa blue and with slatted sides. Unusually these included gaps to allow air to circulate. They contained sacks of onions from Spain. Over a matter of days a chap in a van, presumably working for a vegetable wholesaler,  would arrive and take out a few bags.  When empty the van would make its way back to Spain.

I often wondered how this business was managed. Presumably someone in Spain had a list of British Rail terminals and would despatch a wagon and inform his customer. In those days Speedlink could transport the wagon from the Trainferry to the terminal.

Dry Ice The UK railway industry has been very backwards in offering services to carry refrigerated goods – although now there are a few new services carrying fresh fruit and veg from the continent via the Channel Tunnel. In the 1980s I seem to remember that chilled goods were transported from the continent and sometimes back to the continent in specialised wagons. These had no chiller units or temperature control. Instead they included a compartment which was filled with dry ice at the start of the journey. Hopefully by the end the product was still cold.

Nowadays chilled or frozen goods have to be continuously monitored and if the temperature falls outside a tight margin the product is considered unsaleable. Again, its hard to imagine that such a service worked, but it did.

Lastly – a quick apology. Sorry I haven’t posted for such a long time. But there is plenty to come in the next few weeks.

Future of Rail

I’m off to Mull for a week, so here’s something to think about.

The railway is approaching a financial crisis. Revenues will be down for a year or two, franchises will be supported by the government in most cases. Investment is up. Massively. Electrification and HS2 are being planned, while Crossrail and Thameslink are (kind of) under way.

What should the railway be doing from 2014 onwards? Continue to invest to meet  demand and improve quality? Or retrench to ensure that value for money is delivered from the schemes already underway?

Its not an easy question because the railway is, in my opinion, bloated and out of control on costs.

Southern – No Pride

Along with dozens of other people my son and his friends turned up at Three Bridges to travel to Brighton for Brighton Pride. With four sixteen year olds and a fourteen year old, Groupsave would be the ideal ticket. But guess what? Southern suspends Groupsave for Brighton Pride day (also for White Air and the Lewes Bonfire Day).  While we were waiting we heard three other groups of people find this out at the ticket sales point. They were all as annoyed as we were.

Now I understand that Groupsave is designed to fill empty of peak seats, and that there would be fewer empty seats on Pride day. But to the customer this looks like nothing less than a rip-off.  Southern advertise a product, and on the one day someone wants to use it they withdraw it. Sneaky.

It wasn’t made any better by the fact that the ticket office doors at Three Bridges were stuck closed – resulting in huge queues at the ticket machine.

Don’t get me wrong – I do like Southern. I like their nice trains, and the range of good fares. But they do need to get their act together in other ways.

Journey to Work

How should I travel from Three Bridges to my office near Oxford Circus each day? There are lots of options:

1: Three Bridges to Victoria then Victoria line to Oxford Circus then walk.

• Three Bridges – Victoria = 40 minutes
• Victoria – Wells Street = 16 minutes including 5 minute walk
• Two trains per hour from Three Bridges
• BUT Victoria line horribly crowded – you have to wait for several trains to pass before you can squeeze on. Coming home is just as bad – see my last post!
• Walking along Oxford Street in the morning is pleasant. Walking along Oxford Street in the afternoon is hell.

2: Three Bridges to City Thameslink then bus – Wardour Street then a short walk

• Three Bridges – City Thameslink = 52 minutes
• City Thameslink – Wells Street = 25 minutes including 5 minute walk
• BUT only one suitable train from Three Bridges
• Bus trip much nicer than tube
• Walking across Oxford Street much easier

3: Three Bridges to London Bridge then tube and walk

• Three Bridges – London Bridge = 39 minutes
• London Bridge – Wells Street = 25 minutes including 15 minute walk
• 2 trains per hour from Three Bridges
• Jubilee line pretty busy
• Walking along Oxford Street in the morning is OK

So, what to do? Pick and mix at the moment. Victoria is fine in the mornings, but really difficult in the evenings from Oxford Circus. I tend to go home via City Thameslink as I like the bus trip and the longer train journey gives me more time to read the new paper.

TOPS – a decade a head of its time

On his website Roger Ford lists 100 things that defined British Rail. At number 83 comes TOPS: “Licenced from Southern Pacific in the USA in 1971, BR’s total Operations Processing System brought the computer into the marshalling yard office. Shunters with hands like a bunch of bananas were among BR’s first computer literate employees.”

By the time I joined British Rail in 1981 TOPS was pretty much completely rolled out. Every depot, every yard, and every freight terminal was included. Each train, locomotive, or wagon passing through was carefully recorded and changes of status such as loading or unloading wagons were recorded. TOPS also monitored passenger stock but was effectively mainly a freight system.

At the front end of the system were yard shunters and people on the ground who would go out in all weathers, usually at night, and write down the numbers of every train and wagon they were responsible for. These hand written notes were then faxed (an innovation!) to the nearest TOPS office (there were dozens), where they were manually transcribed by one of hundreds of TOPS clerks into the computer system, which fed into a vast mainframe computer behind Marylebone station.

By 1983 I was a contract manager responsible for day to day monitoring of all construction materials moving by rail in the Southern Region. Each morning I would be handed a swathe of TOPS print outs that would basically tell me what had happened over night. The main think I remember was that each morning I would have to track down a string of broken down wagons from the clapped out fleet that was used on the Redhill to Warrington nightly sand train. Every time this train stopped, it seemed, it would leave behind a broken down wagon. My job was to somehow get these wagons seen to and returned to somewhere useful. This is a simple example of how, for over a decade, TOPS became the basic tool of rail freight management in the UK.

TOPS tracked wagons and locomotives. It could also plan and control traffic automatically – for instance by assigning a new destination as soon as wagons were unloaded, without waiting for someone to intervene. TOPS also managed and monitored maintenance ad had numerous other functions. Gradually TOPS was taught to communicate with the signalling system through a system called TRUST, and this allowed trains to be tracked continually. Customers were provided with PCs so that they could access TOPS directly, not only entering data but using TOPS to manage their own business. These systems were linked into the invoicing systems so that quickly paperwork was completely done away with.

Think about it: by the early 1980s British Rail could track every train and wagon in real time -something no other railway in Europe could do. And, what, 10 years before mobile phones were used in trucks, and 15 years before satnav?

TOPS was not perfect, but it WAS world class. In 1988 I went to Thailand where I worked on freight projects for two years. Without TOPS it was a window on British Rail of the 1960s. There was a whole room full of people trying to track down lost wagons. Rolling stock control added days of delays to every wagon. The Thai railway guys managed their business as best they could – but without TOPS it felt like working with one hand tied behind your back.