UK: Britain’s rail freight sector has work to do to catch up with road haulage in the race to digitalise its operations, according to Tim Shoveller, CEO of Freightliner’s parent company Genesee & Wyoming’s UK and European operations.
Speaking in an exclusive video interview for Rail Business UK, Shoveller said that freight wagons remain ‘dumb’ in comparison to road semi-trailers, which are increasingly equipped with location tracking, condition monitoring and audiovisual recording technology. ‘Rail wagons typically don’t have any of that, yet they do the same job as the heavy goods vehicle’, he said.
Shoveller was speaking on the sidelines of the opening of Operational Training Academy in Doncaster in October. He joined G&W earlier in the year from Network Rail, where he had been Managing Director of the North West & Central region as well as acting as the industry’s lead negotiator in the ongoing industrial disputes.
Reflecting on his early period in the freight sector, Shoveller acknowledged that the economic model for rail freight is still largely determined by pricing in the road market. This in turn meant that there is still little opportunity for rail operators to ‘price in’ the green benefits of choosing rail over road, he felt. ‘Customers are not willing to pay more for an electric train over a diesel train’, he admitted.
‘We are a private company’, he explained. ‘We need a stable environment in which to invest and UK rail does not provide that at the moment’, he added. ‘Perhaps if it existed, a guiding mind like Great British Railways would deliver some strategic direction in areas like infill electrification.’
He also suggested that the UK business could learn plenty from the strong growth seen at its continental European businesses, notably Freightliner Poland, which is competing against around 40 other operators ‘in an even more liberalised market than the UK’s’. Experience of using ETCS would be particularly beneficial, he felt, as Freightliner is already using the in-cab signalling technology to serve destinations in Germany and the Netherlands.
