UK: A long-term rolling stock investment strategy will ‘end the boom-and-bust approach’ and ‘give the supply chain the certainty it needs to plan and invest’, according to Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh.
Speaking at the launch of Rail Campus Derby on October 17, Haigh said ‘the great irony of privatisation is that the part of the industry that works best, that innovates and pushes boundaries — the dynamic supply chain — has been stifled’.
She said suppliers possesses ‘dynamism’ and ‘really passionate people right across the workforce that are itching to get innovation onto the railways but have been stymied by a fractured, very broken system.’
Her regular conversations with SMEs show they have ‘ideas, projects and businesses that would drive forward on the railways’, but they struggle with ‘dealing with over a dozen different operators’ as well as Network Rail.
Haigh said Great British Railways would ‘encourage and allow us to work in partnership and then test and trial those projects across the railways and then roll out those that are working best.’
Rolling stock plan
Asked about a the need for a national rolling stock plan, Haigh said ‘we have already got procurements out for TransPennine Express and Southeastern, and we’re working with all our rolling stock manufacturers already to try and make sure that we flatten the curve.
‘But we will be bringing forward that rolling stock strategy as we set up Great British Railways over the next 18 months to two years. The crucial thing about this is ending the boom-and-bust that has plagued the industry for so long and has seen manufacturers like Alstom here in Derby or Hitachi up in Newton Aycliffe get gluts of orders and stand up the supply chain and then in times of bust all those people lose their jobs and it ends up baking huge amounts of cost into the system as well.
‘So that’s the thinking behind that long-term rolling stock strategy so manufacturers and the supply chain can see that certainty that reduces the cost and crucially gives certainty to the workforce as well.’
Electrification uncertainty
With segments of the industry struggling to specify new rolling stock owing to the uncertainty over future electrification plans, Haigh said ‘I think there’s been massive progress on electrification, but also around battery trains and potentially discontinuous electrification on those harder to electrify routes’.
However, she felt that this progress was ‘not the case for freight’, in particular the last mile into terminals.
Haigh said GBR will have a statutory duty to promote freight, ‘but electrification will come as part of a new 10-year infrastructure strategy that we will be publishing in April. That will be led by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, so we will look at infrastructure in the broadest possible sense, but we will absolutely include electrification.’
