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Thursday 21 Nov 2013

Industry publishes market studies for the next 30 years

Region & Route:

National

Where will Britain’s railways be in 30 years time? The first steps on the way to finding the answers have been published in the form of four market studies. These form part of the industry’s long term planning process created with extensive and inclusive industry engagement, including through Rail Delivery Group.

Divided into four market sectors: London and south east, regional urban, long distance and freight; the documents are the first in a new style of research designed to look 10 to 30 years into the future.

More people travel on the railway today than ever before and demand for passenger and freight services is high and is expected to rise significantly in the future. By assessing how demand is likely to change, they will help form the basis of planning where rail travel will go in Control Period 6 (2019-24) and beyond. They also determine what kind of services will be needed to achieve three important outputs: enabling economic growth, reducing carbon and the transport sector’s impact on the environment, and finally improving the quality of life for communities and individuals.

Network Rail’s group strategy director, Paul Plummer, said: “The investment decisions we make today will last for generations and it is vital that we base them on solid groundwork. These market studies have been developed in consultation with rail industry partners and wider stakeholders and they are the crucial first stage towards planning the future for the railway.

“The next stage will be the creation of a series of route studies, which will develop choices to deliver the conditional outputs across the four markets in each of Network Rail’s devolved routes, and to test them against our funders’ appraisal criteria. I look forward to continuing to work with the rail industry on the next stage of the long term planning process.”

Michael Roberts, Director General of Rail Delivery Group, said: “It is a mark of the industry’s success that demand on Britain’s railway continues to rise, and all parts of the sector are focused on providing growing numbers of customers with the best possible services. If we are to meet that demand while ensuring we have a railway fit for the 21st century – one that delivers for passengers, businesses and taxpayers – it is crucial that the industry plans ahead.

“These studies provide a solid foundation on which we can build a more detailed understanding of how and where passenger and freight demand will change in coming decades, helping us ensure that taxpayers’ and passengers’ money is invested as efficiently as possible.”

While the market studies provide predicted demand figures and the kind of services needed to deal with that demand, they do not suggest infrastructure improvements. Those will form part of the next stage.

Each market study prediction is set against potential growth or decline scenarios for the national economy.

Some highlights of the studies are:

London and south east: The rail market in London and the South East is dominated by demand for travel into central London, in which public transport predominates with a 90 per cent market share. Roughly half of the trips into central London involve use of National Rail, delivering 575,000 people into the centre each day. Historically, the market for central London commuting has grown at an average rate of 1.5 – 2 per cent annually but there is a prediction of 1.3 per cent in the peaks going forward. Growth in the off peak – is steady at four per cent and predicted to continue at that level.

* Long distance: At present around 150m long distance journeys are made by rail annually. This suggests a 10 per cent rail mode share overall, although rail dominates the market for travel between many large cities (such as Leeds-London). In the case of those cities, demand is predicted to rise between 108 and 145 per cent by 2043 if the UK economy grows, or by 40-50 per cent if it struggles.

* Regional urban: Unlike commuting into London, very few people are willing to commute into regional urban centres if the generalised journey time is greater than 60 minutes. Improvements to generalised journey times within this 20-60 minute range will have a large impact where both the number of people in the population catchment of the origin station and the number of jobs in the catchment of the destination station are high. The study predicts a growth of up to 114 per cent in the Manchester commuter market by 2043 if the economy booms, or between up to 67 per cent if not.

* Freight: Total freight traffic, in terms of tonne kilometres moved, is forecast to increase at an average of 2.9 per cent per annum through to the year 2043, implying that the size of the market more than doubles over this period. This particularly reflects expected growth in the intermodal and biomass sectors.

To download the market studies please go to: www.networkrail.co.uk/Long-Term-Planning-Process/