John Redwood

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What are the railways for?

WHAT ARE RAILWAYS FOR?

Why are so many trains cancelled and delayed when there are leaves on the line? Why do the railways get in a spin when its icy, during snowfalls, or even when it just plain wet?

The problems arise because railways place steel wheels on steel rails. They are designed to have little friction or drag, so in poorer weather they have little traction either. Rubber tyres grip much better, so the buses run whilst the trains struggle.

Why are so many more rails breaking or cracking? Why do we need so many speed restrictions? Do we really require so much track maintenance and renewal?

The problems of broken rails have been greatly amplified by the relative success of the privatised railway. Many more tonnes of freight are being hauled by train. The heavier the axle loadings on freight trains, the more damage they do to the tracks. Many more passengers are being carried on fast trains. The faster a train is run along the tracks, the more damage it does to the rails.

If you combine much heavier freight loadings, with many faster trains the damage to the tracks increases dramatically. Heavy hard steel wheels pummel the track, particularly on gradients and bends of which we have all too many.

The main asset of Railtrack in administration is the phenomenal routes they own, with the potential to carry many more people and freight right into the centres of every major town and city in the country, and with the opportunity to carry them over very long distances from one end of the country to another. The question we should be debating is what is the right technology to exploit these routes to maximum effect. We all want a cleaner environment, and we want easier travel over both long and short distances.

We have at least four different types of railway out there, often competing to use sections of the same track. There is the long distance passenger market. This competes with airlines on speed, and with buses and cars on comfort and cost. The traditional railway view has been to upgrade track, signals and trains to try to compete more successfully against the airlines in this congested market.

We should recognise that there are limits imposed by existing technology to how successful railways can be in this market. If I wish to travel 250 miles, it will take 2 and a half hours by train at best, whereas a plane can fly it in 40 minutes. My decision will be depend on where I live and where I want to go in relation to the locations of the airports and stations. If I wish to travel 400 miles, the plane will still do it in less than one hour, whereas the train will take more than 4 hours. It is normally going to be much quicker by plane. Increasing train speeds by one quarter will cost a fortune, but will vary the equation very little for the traveller.

The Japanese are trying out Maglev technology, raising the train from the track to remove friction, and keeping the train on course by side as well as track based guides. With this the equation changes substantially. Running levitated trains allows running speeds two or three times faster than steel wheels on steel track. If we are serious about trains beating planes for the longer distance passenger market, this is what we need to look at.

The second type of railway is the commuter railway. Here the freedom of passage from town centre to town centre comes into its own. At the busiest times of day the roads are badly congested. We need our railways to take a lot of the strain, especially into London. Unfortunately at the very time we need the railways most, they too are badly congested and often unable to supply all the capacity the public would like.There are typically four trains an hour from Wokingham to London, meaning you do not have to wait more than fifteen minutes for a train however bad your journey to the station. Yet in the peak period, the hour and a half from 7.40 in the morning there are only three trains!

It is the commuter railway that is particularly plagued by late running and delays caused by weather conditions, the wrong type of snow and leaves. The shortage of trains when you want them, and late running in inclement conditions are related. Running steel wheels on steel tracks means that trains which have to speed up and slow down many times on a short journey in order to pick people up at all the intermediate stations struggle to get a grip. For safety reasons there have to be very large gaps between the trains, as they are difficult to stop once they have momentum on the tracks.

The Paris metro runs on rubber tyres. Rubber gives trains much more grip, allowing them to accelerate more quickly and surely, and allowing the driver to brake the trains to a halt more quickly. We do not need to have one mile or more segregation between buses in the morning, because rubber tyres and their braking systems allow much more rapid deceleration from speed.

We should examine new compounds for train wheels to give greater adhesion. This would reduce late running and cancellations, and would allow a new safety standard to put more trains onto the same stretch of commuter track in the mornings and evenings when they are needed.

The third type of railway is the freight railway. Steel wheels on steel tracks are great at shifting very heavy loads very long distances without stopping over flat terrain. They are ideal for shipping grain and hogs across the Great Plains of the USA in very long trains, using very little power. Momentum keeps them going. They are more problematic in hill and valley terrain, or where there are many bends. We do need more freight to go by train, but need to make sure that axle loadings are not too high, doing too much damage to the track. We also need to continue the development post privatisation of more single wagon marshalling, with suitable freight sidings at industrial location, to cut down on the amount of trans-shipment.

The fourth is the cross country railway. This competes poorly with coaches and cars, and is dogged by a lack of frequent services between the main locations outside London.

The best use for our railway is to get commuting right, to improve freight haulage especially of large and heavy loads, and to understand that fast passenger movement is best over medium range, not long range distances. Extra money should be spent on freight infrastructure, including a new generation of trains and wagons that do less damage to the rails, and on a new style of passenger train for commuters that has much more traction and can run in all weathers.

A truly integrated transport policy will require a revolution in Town Hall thinking about getting people to stations to start using the train in the first place. It means better road access to stations from towns and housing estates, with good bus services, better roads and improved car parking. Then the train could start to shift a far bigger proportion of the morning and evening peak flows. For long distance fast travel we need to look abroad to a very different technology. Steel wheels on steel rails will never be fast enough, but the faster they go the more damage they will do.