Yet Railtrack had freight directors, and NR has one today. They were responsible for seeing that their customers were not squeezed out, but it’s clear from Shaw’s report that this has not proved either sufficient or effective in the past.
The report said: “The Shaw Report team intends that the role of the freight team is protected and enhanced, rather than diluted in a further devolved organisation. The role of this route should include identifying opportunities for freight, helping develop and implement freight policy, managing freight performance and acting as overall champion to ensure that freight operators are not overlooked in what is a primarily passenger-dominated railway.”
Shaw imagines a future in which the freight director stands equally with route directors (both described as CEOs in her report, which is an unnecessary inflation of job titles). This will depend as much on the individuals appointed to these posts as the structure in which they work.
With parts of the network running short of capacity for extra traffic, and TOCs promising more trains and more money for DfT, there will be some tough arguments (and choices) about the best use of space. Recent track access discussions have featured TOCs arguing that they have a government-given right to extra space, but freight struggles to make this argument. Furthermore, with a recent sharp decline in coal traffic, the freight sector can look as if it’s yesterday’s industry that’s unable to find a place today.
However, InterCity RailFreight consultant Nick Gallop argued in the last RailReview that freight’s future should be with high-speed, high-value goods that link distribution centres with city centres. This is more akin to passenger traffic, which creates the possibility of even more competition for track space and yet more difficult discussions for route directors and their freight colleague.
RAIL FREIGHT
Despite this, the Rail Freight Group remains positive. Executive Director Maggie Simpson told RAIL 799 in April that she welcomed Shaw’s report: “I think the Shaw report is actually very good for freight. Arguably there has never been a government report into the railways that has had such an emphasis on freight. It got two things right - it gave a lot of importance to having freight routes with equivalent status to the other routes, and generally I think Shaw recognised in the models she was proposing that you have to make sure freight is properly looked after.”
She added: “The rhetoric around having a strong freight route is hugely powerful. What that means in practice remains to be seen, but it gives us the strongest possible footing to do that.”
With NR’s recent announcement that it is taking forward Shaw’s ‘virtual freight route’ recommendation, Simpson explores this in more detail in her column on pages 62-63 this issue.
It’s not just freight that needs strong management across route boundaries. CrossCountry needs the same treatment. It’s an operator based on Birmingham, not London, and so it doesn’t fit NR’s route model that is focused on the capital (less for Scottish and Welsh routes).
London has always been a strong draw for railway companies. Yet before Grouping in 1923 that created the London and North Eastern Railway, it was not universal. Northern England had its own railway companies.
The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway described its patch with its name. The Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway was another, although it later let the side down by changing its name to the Great Central Railway and building a main line ‘extension’ to London.
The Great Northern served Doncaster and Leeds from London; the Midland served Sheffield and Leeds before heading towards Carlisle; the London & North Western served Liverpool and Manchester, built a branch to Leeds, and pushed on to Carlisle; and the LYR, LNWR and GCR all built routes under the Pennines to provide east-west links across the North’s industrial heartland.
The Grouping in 1923 severed the management of the routes, although not the lines themselves. The LYR route via Summit and the LNWR via Standedge remain today - busy with trains, but still divided in management terms between NR’s LNW and LNE routes.
As this split nears its centenary, it’s seen as unhelpful when set against the Government’s Northern Powerhouse devolution strategy. Shaw therefore recommends that NR creates a Northern Route to bridge the Pennines. She admits that there is unlikely to be a perfect geography that fits the diverse nature of NR’s customers, but with Northern England’s two regional train operators - Northern and TransPennine Express - moving towards local political control and away from the DfT, there’s clear pressure for closer links to NR.
Shaw recommends that plans for the Northern Route are tested against their ability to:
■ Enable political accountability.
■ Support economic growth.
■ Enable effective co-ordination between the route and TOCs.
■ Remain of a manageable size and scale for a single route director to operate.
While admitting that there may be costs involved with changing boundaries and responsibility, Shaw notes that NR has already divided routes into smaller areas. This could provide a simpler way of creating a new Northern Route, by switching the areas (LNE North, LNW North and LNE Central) that will form the route from their current head offices.
The changes must also consider how to properly manage the two Anglo-Scottish main lines that will run through the Northern Route. There is a case for keeping each under its own management team (notwithstanding their transition to the Scottish route at the border).
Railtrack had this problem when it created a Midlands Zone that stretched from the Welsh coast to the North Sea, across the West and East Midlands and south to London. In this case the East Coast Main Line ran in a corridor that split Lincolnshire from the rest of the zone. The West Coast Main Line had no equivalent treatment and was split between the Midlands, North Western and Scottish zones.
