A new dawn for passenger trains...and perhaps for the freight sector too - Martin Bignell

The 1st April 2022 marked a significant change in how Scotland’s passenger railway is delivered, with ScotRail transferring back under national control for the first time since 1994. But for all the hard work behind the scenes to ensure the passenger services continued without hiccup as ScotRail Trains Limited and Scottish Rail Holdings pickup up the legal, regulatory, technical, HR, financial, technological, liability, access agreement and contractual reins that lurk hidden behind the tickets we buy, the seats we travel on and the timetables we use, for Rail Freight in Scotland, April 1st was just a normal Friday no different to 25th March or indeed April 8th.

Martin Bignell, Scottish and Northern Representative, Rail Freight Group

Rail freight remains a commercially owned and managed enterprise deploying private capital in locomotives, drivers, rail wagons, terminals, equipment and facilities competing with each other to attract business and collectively to attract freight customers to the network. And customers are increasingly being attracted to meet corporate goals to decarbonise supply chains and to respond to Government targets for modal shift.

Much has changed over the 28 years since privatisation, not least in rail freight. Competition has driven out inefficiencies and seen new entrants shake up the market with innovative approaches to operations and marketing of services. Huge traditional traffics like coal have evaporated as UK energy policy has evolved, necessitating operators to be creative in finding and exploiting new business. Some business models have not survived, despite their apparent attractiveness, wagon-load networks being most obvious. But rail freight operators and road logistics operators have become closer, drawing on each other’s strengths rather than competing with each other to grow markets and offer truly integrated services, dramatically so in the case of intermodal.

There has always been a tension between the highly planned passenger railway and the largely customer-reactive nature of rail freight services. The perennial question of how much capacity should be made available on the network for freight services to use, when it can be the case that the capacity won’t be used today, or every day. The perceived opportunity to run another passenger train in that space instead for the sake of connectivity, even if the number of passengers on the train that does run might be few.

April 1st 2022 changed this dynamic tension, perhaps for the better. It brought policy closer to delivery, and accountability closer to the elected. If modal shift of freight onto rail is critical to Scotland’s decarbonisation goals, working across the industry with a nationalised operator better enables decisions around timetables and capacity to allow for it. Nudging passenger services a bit here, a bit there to create space for a commercially viable rail freight service to navigate through without arguments around the franchise or commercial impact if minimal passenger impact can be proven, can only be a good thing.

Of course, the industry still must play fairly with one another, and horns will still be locked at times. But perhaps nationalised passenger operations and commercial freight operations might lead to new service innovations being explored. As emerging express logistics services using converted passenger rolling stock begin to make an appearance, is it so inconceivable that one train departing for Inverness or beyond might be carrying you in carriage A, and next day internet deliveries in carriage E?

Martin Bignell, Scottish and Northern Representative, Rail Freight Group