UK: The government should not tinker with the performance, capacity and charging regimes during the process of setting up Great British Railways, GB Railfreight Managing Director John Smith believes.
‘In the early stages of GBR, I think if they tinker with the performance, capacity and charging regime too much it will just be a problem they don’t want’, he told Rail Business UK on May 28. ‘So I would keep it exactly as is, get GBR levered in, and then we can talk to them about how we grow rail freight and how changing or tweaking some of the rules around our access rights can help us.’
He said ‘we have rights that we understand at the moment, and that’s allowed us to grow our business from nothing to the size we are now, employing 1 500 people.’ Once the details of the government plans for GBR are confirmed, ‘we will see what the legislation states and then how they distil that into a mechanism that works.’
Smith said much of GBRf’s growth has been driven by the intermodal market, with Felixstowe growing from 12 trains to 38 trains per day, and London Gateway to about 20 trains/day with aspirations to reach 40, and further growth will require rights to capacity on the network.
GBRf locomotive 66728 was renamed ’Chartered Institution of Railway Operators — Celebrating 25 Years’ at London Waterloo on May 28. It had previously been named ‘Institution of Railway Operators’, and the change reflects the granting of CIRO’s charter. ’In 2008 the naming recognised the importance of the work that the institution does, but we’ve come an awful long way since then’, said CIRO Chief Executive Philip Sherratt.
Smith said he expects rail industry recruitment to step up once the current uncertainty surrounding the future of the industry ends, and CIRO would play a key part in bringing the next generation of operators into the sector.
