RAIL Partners, an organisation that represents the private passenger and freight operators, commissioned the University of Hull to study the impact of a significant transfer of freight traffic to rail as part of its input to legislation that will help form Great British Railways.
The Freight Expectations report outlines the benefit of Government action to support a target of 4% annual growth in rail freight, which would result in three times the amount of traffic being carried by 2050. It suggests that the 2021/22 volume of 18,710 million tonne kilometres (tkms) could reach 54,897 million tkms if that rate of growth took place.
The statistics reflect a growing domestic intermodal market, with an uplift from 720 to 5286 million tkms and maritime intermodal growing from 5780 to 18,605 million tkms. By 2050, the largest commodity traffic is forecast to be construction materials, growing four-fold to reach 20,031 million tkms.
Incentives