R A I LT R AC K - The Railways Archive

The market for rail services
Since 1995,passenger numbers have increased by 25% in what has been one of the main successes of the new rail industry.
This is against the background of static passenger rail traffic over most of this century (at around 30bn passenger kilometres
annually) and declining market share.
Against a momentous period of social change, through two wo rld wars and the tra n s fo rmation of personal mobility
through the rise of the motorcar and development of the road netwo rk , rail usage has been remark a bly stabl e. In our view, t h i s
stability reflects an ove rall constraint on the netwo rk ’s carrying capacity. E ven though the netwo rk size has diminished over the
c e n t u ry, p a rt i c u l a rly through the Beeching closures of the 1960s, the lines that were closed ra r e ly carried significant vo l u m e s .
There are now a number of factors supporting a shift towards long-term sustainable growth:
• aspirations by train operators to develop and grow their businesses along with powerful economic incentives for them
to do so
• the Government’s support for public transport and its stated intention of putting rail at the heart of its Integrated
Transport Policy
• growing environmental concerns about the sustainability of increased car usage and freight on a constrained-capacity
road network, combined with increasing costs of road use and slower journey times
• a trend of declining rail fares in real terms,after 20 years of price increases (our market research shows that rail fares
are still the single biggest impediment to increased use of rail).
However, unless something is done to develop the network,it is very unlikely that significant growth can be realised.We have
investigated a range of future growth scenarios for passenger traffic from less than 1% per annum to over 4%,and considered
the investment needed to create necessary capacity to deliver that growth.In consequence, we have proposed a programme
totalling £27bn to facilitate a 30% growth in passenger miles by 2009.This is in line with the Deputy Prime Minister’s targets.
On freight. After decades of decline, we have seen a 40% increase in freight tonne-kilometres since 1995 and there
is now a real prospect of sustainable long-term growth.Again, we have considered a range of future growth scenarios involving
compound annual growth rates of up to 9%,in line with our customers’ forecasts.The latter involves a trebling of rail freight
within ten years – a target which the Government also endorses in its integrated transport White Paper.The plans in this
NMS are designed to deliver this growth,and the costs are included in the £27bn total.
Consulting widely with customers and stakeholders
Railtrack plays a pivotal strategic planning role in the rail industry. Since the 1998 NMS, we have undertaken extensive
consultation with our customers (train operators) and funders (Passenger Transport Executives,the Franchising Director and
local authorities) through a structured account planning process,to understand their requirements and how these can be met.
We have consulted extensively on longer-term studies of strategic options for developing individual routes and alleviating
capacity bottlenecks. We have undertaken research into public and passenger opinion to ensure that our plans reflect
passenger priorities. We have also carried out environmental and cost-benefit assessments of the case for developing the rail
network.The resulting ten-year plan is therefore an industry – not just a Railtrack – document.It is truly collaborative.
We have proposed
a programme
totalling £27bn to
facilitate a 30%
growth in passenger
kilometres and a
trebling of freight
by 2009
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