Getting back on track

IMAGINE boarding a train in Dundee at 10pm, travelling to Edinburgh through a tunnel under the Forth, changing by escalator on to a sleeper service at Waverley station and arriving at Brussels at 6am - European time.

Alternatively, picture freshly caught shellfish being loaded onto freight carriages in Elgin in the morning and reaching London’s restaurants in time for the pre-theatre rush.

Now wake up. Trains can transport people and goods faster, more safely and more efficiently than roads. But Scotland’s railway network has been held back by a complicated bureaucracy, the expense of building tracks, the greater flexibility of roads and a lack of imagination for at least a generation.

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling last week addressed the problem of complexity with his long-awaited review of Britain’s railways. By abolishing the Strategic Rail Authority and spreading its powers among the Scottish Executive, the Department of Transport in England, the Welsh Assembly and the various city-based passenger transport executives, he attempted to clarify who will have responsibility for an improved transport network.

Nicol Stephen, Scotland’s transport minister, told Scotland on Sunday the new system could cut the amount of time it takes to approve projects such as the Stirling to Kincardine line from a mind-numbing ten years to just two or three.

Stephen said: "Some projects have taken a ridiculous amount of time to progress, even where funding is in place. We will be able to make decisions much more quickly and efficiently."

Over the next few years, some of Stephen’s powers will move to the new agency Transport Scotland which should be in place by 2007 and MSPs from all parties are keen to find an alternative to the hugely time-consuming process of starting a committee to approve every significant rail project.

About £3bn has already been earmarked for projects such as improvements to Waverley Station, the Borders rail link, trains to Edinburgh and Glasgow airports, and the Bathgate to Airdrie line. The Edinburgh airport link may also provide the first stage in an enhanced service to northern Scotland.

All the official plans will make life easier for passengers in particular areas, but none - with the possible exception of the Waverley upgrade - has the potential to change the way Scotland travels.

Those with a historical bent might look at a map of Scotland’s railways before the 1960s - a vast network with stations in every accessible village and suburb - and say that today’s proposals look feeble by comparison.

Transport campaigners want projects that go much further - including improved access to the Eurocentral interchange in Lanarkshire, a high-speed five-city passenger network across Scotland and 20-minute bullet trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Gavin Scott, the Freight Transport Association’s policy manager for Scotland, would like to see goods lines from the northeast and from the proposed new port at Hunterston to the Eurocentral exchange at Mossend in Lanarkshire. He welcomed Darling’s rail review on the basis that it will be easier to talk to one body - the Scottish Executive - but had a few reservations.

"If a line is freight-only, the government says the freight operators will have to pay the whole cost of operating the lines. That may lead to some operators asking which services they can afford," Scott said. "On the other hand, they have guaranteed long term access to freight on routes where lines are shared."

Despite that guarantee, Darling’s paper does not tackle what the FTA sees as the main barrier to getting more freight onto rail - the fact that freight trains often have to wait in sidings to make way for passenger trains.

One Aberdeen-based FTA member told Scott: "I would love to use railways more than I do. But it is almost impossible because it takes longer to send goods to the central belt by train than by lorry."

According to Stephen, the Executive is looking at making the Aberdeen-Eurocentral route usable for trains carrying the most modern freight containers - but the idea still has to meet strict value for money criteria before it will be approved.

Passenger transport gets more attention than freight, and its demands tend to be greater. Transform Scotland, the transport lobby group, supports the current list of projects but hopes to win the Executive round to four ‘blue sky’ ideas.

The first is a network of inter-city routes across the country - including double tracks where they are currently single which would cut the journey time from Inverness to Glasgow by about an hour. Second, non-stop sleeper services to continental Europe, which would require no additional infrastructure.

Third, tram systems not just in Edinburgh but Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen, all of which are of similar size to cities in France with trams. Finally, the group wants to see a rail tunnel between South and North Queensferry, removing the Forth Bridge bottleneck from the east coast.

None of these ideas has any hope of becoming reality before the £3bn allocated for the next 10 years has been spent. But Stephen is anxious not to rule anything out. He said: "All these plans are important to properly assess. We need to think about the period from 2012 to 2020 and plan for it over the next few years."

Reactions to Darling’s paper were markedly different in England and Scotland. South of the Border, it was seen by passenger groups as a cost-cutting measure which would endanger loss-making local train services. In Scotland, it was seen as a devolution of power which will speed up blocked projects.

Just how much cash Scotland will get has still to be finalised, but the Executive hopes that it will at least receive enough to carry out its new functions. Stephen said: "It is important to have a fair financial settlement because we are taking on new financial responsibilities. More work needs to be done."

That may seem reasonable given that Darling’s Edinburgh Central constituency includes Waverley station, but the Transport Secretary will not want to be seen shifting money from English commuters to Scotland just before a general election.

Darling’s paper was not clear on a few aspects of the relationship between Edinburgh and London. Iain Smith, a member of the Scottish parliament’s local government and transport committee, said: "There are still questions about the implications for the east coast and west coast main lines. It is not clear whether they will be overseen by the Scottish Executive or Westminster."

Smith, who like Stephen is a member of the Liberal Democrats, said that for simplicity’s sake he would prefer to see the Executive’s powers start at the border rather than have lines to Edinburgh and Glasgow which were Westminster’s responsibility. But such an arrangement - dividing up the cost of a main line - will complicate the budget talks even further.

The huge cost of rail projects is one of the main barriers to getting more done, although trains are taking up an increasing proportion of the Executive’s expanding transport budget.

Ministers are standing the received wisdom of decades on its head. Because most journeys are made by road, it was argued in the past, a 10% increase in the roads budget would benefit more people than a 10% rise in spending on rail. The new logic is that improved rail services will attract drivers off the roads, making both the roads and railways more attractive.

If, as seems likely, FirstGroup wins the franchise to run Scotland’s railways, that will give the Aberdeen company an opportunity to show that it can run high quality services as well as cut costs.

Eventually, the main rail routes will be unable to carry any more trains, at which point a serious amount of extra cash will be required to build new tracks. Stephen does not believe that point is close yet. "It is a big challenge. The rail network is becoming more congested because demand is increasing, but there is still more capacity."

Freight operators, faced with even more passenger trains competing for track time, may disagree. Transport Scotland and its local divisions - including a remodelled version of Strathclyde Passenger Transport - are likely to face more vocal pressure from the passenger lobby than freight.

Rather than taking their complaints to the SRA in London’s Victoria Street, freight operators will be able to badger MSPs and the Executive with the threat of lost jobs.

Pressure may not just come from the freight lobby. Reducing the share of cash spent on the roads is relatively easy to do now. But it may turn out to be a risky strategy if the number of drivers increases faster than road capacity. Given that the population is becoming more affluent, and therefore more able to afford cars, that may well happen.

Enticing them to leave their cars at home will require major construction projects which are delivered on time. Passengers will be praying that the Executive can recruit enough experts on railways - an area where it currently actively looking for staff - by the time Transport Scotland takes over.