 The ninth meeting in 2015 of the infrastructure and capital investment committee. Everyone present is reminded to switch off mobile phones as they do affect the broadcasting system. As meeting papers are provided in digital format, you may see tablets being used during the meeting. No apologies have been received. Today's only agenda item is for the committee to take further evidence on its freight transport inquiry. This week, the committee will hear from two panels, the first featuring regional transport partnerships and Transformed Scotland. The second panel will be with Network Rail. Can I welcome Michael Cairns, strategy manager at Tayside and Central Scotland Transport Partnership, Alec Macaulay, South East Scotland Transport Partnership, councillor James Stockin, chair and Neil McRae, Highlands and Islands Transport Partnership and Phil Matthews, chair of Transformed Scotland. I think we'll move straight to questions. Can I kick off by asking you to provide the committee with an overview of your organisation and the role it plays in Scottish freight transport, please, and who would like to kick off? Thanks, chair. As the committee will well know, Cestran is one of the seven regional transport partnerships in Scotland, the statutory regional strategic transport planning bodies. We covered an area from the Scottish borders up to the River Tay, encompassing eight local authorities and a population of about one and a half million people. The committee will also be aware that the fundamental role of regional transport partnerships is to produce and monitor and assist with the implementation of a regional transport strategy, which we have done within Cestran. We have just recently completed a review of the first regional transport strategy, and that strategy itself includes a wide range of policies and proposals that are in support of rail freight in the region and connectivity of the region to elsewhere in Scotland and beyond. A fundamental element of that set of policies and proposals is our firm belief that the estuary of the River Forth and its surrounding land areas form the strategic logistics gateway for Scotland to mainland Europe and, indeed, beyond that, and there are strong policies in support of that. In that context, we are very supportive of the policies within NPF 3, which identify the need for improved waterborne freight in the Forth estuary and, indeed, are very supportive of Grangemouth as a logistics centre and a development centre for central Scotland. We have, over the years, been involved in a number of EU-funded freight-based projects to name a few, one called Dryport, one called Foodport, one called Low Pinot and one called West Flows, and, indeed, we did join with partners in West Flows under the former chairmanship of this committee and gave a presentation to a number of members of the committee last year on the outputs from the West Flows project. These projects have identified a number of areas where improvements to freight logistics could be beneficial to the Scottish economy. For example, in the Dryport project, we have completed stag appraisals for the Levenmouth rail link, for extension of passenger and freight services down to Levenmouth, for extension of the Stirling-Allow line round to Rossife with the Charleston cord and the importance of gearing rail freight and maintaining the rail freight sidings into the Rossife port. We have reinforced the role of Coatbridge, in fact, as Scotland's main Dryport centre. We have also, as part of that project, produced a freight map and publications of rail freight services to and from Scotland to assist the industry in choosing the potential for rail rather than depending purely on road. Within the food port project, we did an analysis of food products in and out of Scotland and were very active in lobbying for the support for the Rossife to Zebrugge freight service. I am glad to say that Scottish Government support seems now to be more secure than it was 12 months ago. Within the low-pinode project, we have carried out studies of the empty containers in Scotland. As the committee will know, Scotland is a net exporter, unlike the rest of the UK, the net result of which is that we have to pay in Scotland for the import of empty containers in order to service the export industry. We have also commissioned a bulk freight study of the ports around Scotland as well. Within waste flows, it flagged up one of the major deficiencies that, in the joint-chair submission, we identified, which is a shortage of robust information on freight flows. That applies not just in Scotland, but throughout Europe. As part of the waste flows project, we produced a set of trip matrices for the four main modes of freight movement on a zone-by-zone basis—something like 70-odd zones in north-west Europe—and I think that that is, in fact, the first time that that has actually been achieved. Let me come on to some of the specifics in the course of our session. Who else would like to provide an overview of the organisation and the contribution that makes to the freight transport sector? In terms of TACTRAN, very much picking up on what Alec has already said. The regional transport partnership covers Sengist, Dundee, Perthingsmawson, Stirling, with about half a million population. We have also destroyed the main routes connecting the central belt with the West Highlands in Vanessa in the north and Aberdeen in quite a strategic location. In terms of our involvement with freight, along with theatre RTPs, we have a freight quality partnership, which meets at roughly six monthly intervals. Attendees, on a regular basis, at that are the freight transport association, the road haulage association, the region's ports and our local authority partners. Through the FQP, we've done quite a bit of work in terms of looking at the road haulage sector overnight, lorry parking, lorry route maps, providing a website for road freight information. We're also involved with the regional timber transport group, which is concerned with the movement of timber from felling to end user. It's a major issue within the region as the significant areas of forestry, many of which are coming up to a point of being felled at the moment. We've had some involvement with the rail freight industry. It's a bit of a whole in the rail freight sector generally. A lot of rail freight passes through the region, but there are no terminals within the region currently. But we have done work in looking at trying to develop facilities for timber, seed potatoes and bottled water within the region, and we do have some hopes for the next few months in terms of at least two of those. Similarly, we've been involved with European projects. The two we've been involved in have concerned the last mile or city logistics. One was the enclosed project where we were jointly with Dundee City Council, the result of which was the production of a sustainable urban logistics plan, which sets out the way forward in terms of promoting more sustainable logistics within Dundee. The other project is the Lamylo project, and we're still working on the development of an urban consolidation centre, covering Dundee and Perth, and hope to have something positive on that certainly next year. Great. Thank you, councillor. Stocking, did you want to come in? Yes, thank you very much. Just very much value, the opportunity to come and speak. I've got a personal passion about a transport and freight, having a past life of being involved in that, and now to come and speak for the regional transport partnership, I think it's really important. As you know, the high-trans areas half the land mass of Scotland, we serve the most difficult places to reach, 100 islands, but only a tenth of the population. The whole region, I believe, wants to be contributing to the national picture, but the freight structure that we have and the legacy we've got needs massive investment for us to be able to compete on a genuine basis with everyone else because the world is moving on. We use all modes of transport to export freight. We use air, rail, road and sea transport, and just because of the vastness of the geographical area, different solutions have got to be found for different things. Our transport system is becoming much more fragile as the world moves on. When I was first involved in moving things around, there was the saying, just in time, that came along for goods and deliveries and getting to market. It's kind of moved on now to just in the nick of time, and these timescales are getting more and more difficult to meet. I just feel that we need to look because when we don't, when our infrastructure fails, as you can hear on the television, where land slips and ferries now come and there's empty supermarkets, there's fresh fish and lobsters and all the rest, they don't make their market, we become more vulnerable as a community even then we are at present and we must make sure that we cover all those things and that the investment is really important so that we can remain a contributory part of the country and to make sure that things happen in the right way with the right investment for the future. We are really interested from our organisation to come and contribute to this inquiry. I know that you have read the submissions, so I'm not going to say anything more. I'm really interested in the questions that you might have from them. I'm sure that we'll come on to the issue of investment. Mr McRae, do you have anything to add? No, just a couple of points in terms of our practical engagement on freight. We have a freight forum, which brings together the private stakeholders and the local politicians, which I think is important. On top of that, there are rail and ferry user groups, which provide opportunities for hauliers to contribute and engage with other stakeholders in the area in terms of raising their concerns. On top of that, we might just draw attention to a number of the projects that are referenced in the submission, but, similarly to Cestrans, we've been involved in European projects such as Lifting the Spirit, which we might talk about later, but also bits of research in terms of a freight capability study that we carried out in 2010, which has hopefully helped to inform some of the investment that Network Rail will be carrying out in the Highland Main line and far and north-west lines. I'm here as chair of Transform Scotland, which is the national alliance for sustainable transport. Our members are the major rail, bus and ferry companies, public bodies and local national groups campaigning for public transport walking and cycling. I think that our primary interest is in encouraging a transport policy that is sustainable in the widest economic, social and environmental sense and which reduces the negative impacts of transport policy. Our primary focus is really on passenger transport and walking and cycling. We collaborate a lot with the rail freight group and I've given evidence to you specifically on some of those issues, but I think that one of our main thrusts is on investment in infrastructure and investment in infrastructure that encourages more sustainable transport modes. Clearly, that has implications for passenger transport and rail freight as well. Our primary support is for rail freight and also for seaborn and canal-based transport, where that's appropriate. I'll finish off to reflect on the reasons for that. The road haulage industry has a significant impact in all sorts of ways. We know that HGVs contribute adversely in terms of road safety. There's an awful lot of accidents involving HGVs. We know that one freight train can move 50 to 60 lorries off the roads. We know that rail freight only has about a quarter of the carbon emissions per ton carried compared to road and about a tenth of the particulate and NOx emissions, which, given the concern about air quality at the moment, is obviously another significant issue. I think that the final point to make is that HGVs are a major contributor to wear and tear in the roads. We've been running a campaign recently on the poor state of repair of a lot of our roads as a £2.2 billion backlog. HGVs contribute a lot to the damage to our road infrastructure. We would like to see all those things taken into account in appraising the outcomes and encouraging more sustainable modes of freight transport wherever possible. I want to ask you about infrastructure obstacles to the free movement of freight. One thing that the committee has been keen to do through this inquiry is to identify the main obstacles to that free flow. How would you prioritise what your most pressing difficulty is and how we could overcome it? One being infrastructure obstacles and one being operational obstacles. I think that there is a major operational obstacle, which is discouraging the use of rail freight and discouraging the use of short-sea shipping as the two more sustainable modes, particularly for longer-distance freight movements. That is information. It is actually very difficult to get information on services for rail freight and it is difficult to get information on services for short-sea shipping. Anyone can go on to a website and find a website that will tell them all the public transport services that they need for the journey that they want. A common platform exists for passenger transport. We do not have a common platform for freight transport. That seems to us to be a significant barrier. There are a number of specific infrastructure areas. The A1, for example, down to the north-east of England, where a lot of the freight short-sea shipping movements are based, really needs to be upgraded to a dual-carriage-way standard on both sides of the Scottish border. On a more local base for the Cestran region, we have been campaigning for a long number of years for the completion of the A801M8M9 link, which provides the link from Central Scotland freight facilities down to Grangemouth. There is a particularly bad section of it there. Of course, the Edinburgh city bypass is a continuing thorn in our flesh. It is just as much a thorn for freight movement as it is. In terms of rail freight, I will not go on about rail freight because I know that you are hearing from Network Rail later this morning. It seems to us that there are structural problems in short-sea shipping. When you look at the competition in mainland Europe, they tend to be either public sector owned or public-private partnership basis. When the port itself wants to expand, there is the immediate public sector support to provide connectivity either by rail or by inland waterways. There are size limitations, particularly in our area in Grangemouth and Leith. There are access limitations, both tidal access limitations for 24-hour access and operational issues associated with that. I will come back to the centralised information system. There are other issues about the frequency of the size of the ZBrug ferry service. That will only become more frequent as the utilisation of short-sea shipping increases. In terms of air, we tend to forget the role of air in freight movement. In our region, the busiest passenger airport in Scotland is also the busiest freight airport in Scotland. That is a combination of either dedicated freight planes with the dedicated freight depot at the east side of the airport, but there is also an increasing ability now for more use of longer-haul services in Scotland and using the hold space in these longer-haul services for high-value, low-weight facilities. There are a number of issues. As I say, I will not go into rail. We do have our own local issues in terms of rail as well as the national issues in terms of gauge issues and electrification issues, but I will leave that to what we are going to do with later. When you talk about a centralised information system, who do you think should facilitate the setting up of that? I think that it should be a Government-based initiative. One of the anomalies in the current devolution settlement is that the Scottish Parliament, as you know, has the responsibility for ports and harbours, but it does not have the responsibility for international movements. That remains with the Department for Transport down in Westminster, who are not particularly interested in whether a ship lands in Scotland or a ship lands in England, as long as it lands in the UK somewhere. It always seems to us that there is a case for, in a Scottish context, having much more hands-on involvement in international movements, both passenger and freight. If we are to look at moving freight from road-based—to be honest, the vast majority of road-based transport is local, and the vast majority of that is within Scotland, as we all know. The proportion of it, which is longer distance in road, is much lower than it is proportionally with rail and shipping, but the volumes are still greater than rail or shipping. The issue with that is that it is an information system that is needed to identify and allow bookings on longer distance movements to get that mode shift. You will not get the mode shift for the last mile, other than local shift to different fuels and so on, but there is a real potential for mode shift to rail and shipping for longer distance services. That is where we get into the international issues here, and original authority cannot do that. We have done our bit, we have published as much as we could in terms of the availability of freight depots for rail and services and so on, but it does not give that centralised platform for information and ease of booking and ease of paying the charges and comparing different carriers and so on. If you strap for cash, it is not a big capital investment to produce that, and the potential benefits to the freight logistics industry would be, in our view, considerable. It really needs to be a centrally either Scottish Government-based or UK Government-based initiative. Just before I move on to the rest of the panel, one thing that has been identified in previous sessions is the last mile. The last mile is one of the biggest obstacles in the free flow. Is that something that you agree with? I do agree with that, and I think that it is a very difficult nut to crack, because we do have a patently obvious clash between environmental considerations, noise considerations, pollution considerations and efficient last mile movements. I do not know whether you noticed, but PTAG, the organisation in England, the public sector transport organisation, published a report just last week. Sorry, I am exaggerating there. It was February. It is a very good urban logistics report, with case studies throughout the UK of good examples of how to address the issue. However, if we are to be successful in improving urban logistics, we need to address the issue that logistics operators are faced with congestion in the urban areas. They are also using vehicles that are polluting within the urban areas. The air quality management areas are suffering from freight, as well as all the other types of traffic. There needs to be a mechanism, and Mike mentioned the TAC Trans initiative, for an urban freight consolidation distribution centre. That is really what we need to get. That needs also to be combined with a good location close to the urban area, so that alternative modes are viable and sensible, so that you can use electric vehicles that have a limited mileage capability. You can use electric bikes and electric trikes to get into the narrow streets and pedestrianised areas. It is difficult not to crack. If you look at local authority policies, it has been very restrictive of freight in urban areas, giving priority quite rightly to pedestrians, giving priority to public transport, giving priority to cyclists and so on. Freight is down the pecking order in that. It was ever thus, and I think that it is a difficult issue. The last mile is a difficult not to crack. That is where local authorities and regional authorities have the potential to have a much more proactive role in addressing that. I think that if anything would probably say, just picking up on the last points there, that the operational issues are perhaps bigger than the infrastructural ones, in that the issues like air quality and so on arise from urban logistics. Within the Tactron region, generally the network is pretty good. The A90 is dual throughout. The A9 is dual or is planned to be upgraded and dualed. In terms of roads, the only constraint that is identified in STPR but does not have a programme date for it is the A90 through or around Dundee. That is the king's way and for the road in Dundee, which suffers congestion during the daytime, particularly in the peak periods, when commuters collide with through movements to the north-east. In terms of rail, as I said previously, we don't actually have any rail fit facilities within the region. A possible location has been identified at the port of Dundee, but it's very much identifying a particular user and then funding and looking in the region about £5 million to develop that sort of facility. The ports are a bit of a mixed bag. Montrose has seen a considerable amount of investment and has been significantly upgraded, including using facilities grant over the past five to ten years or so. At the other end is Perth, which has a need for investment but has declining tonnage. So there's a bit of a conundrum there in terms of do you put the investment in and hopefully turn around the decline in the port or will the decline continue? I think that it is very much more that a big issue certainly within the region in Dundee and Perth and, again, in the newly designated air quality management area in Cwifth is the road for it movements. If anything, that's probably a bigger priority than addressing infrastructure. I agree with Alex McRae and Mr Stockton on a mix of infrastructure and operational issues just without wanting to provide a long list, but to touch on a few of those in terms of the important ones with respect to our area by mode, I touched on the rail issue in terms of the single track constraints and gauge restrictions on the Highland main line and the barriers that is to passenger freight as well as actual material and goods, but also other weight restrictions on that in the far north and west lines that are also a problem. So we're also looking forward to the investment from Network Rail, hopefully in control period five for upgrades there. In terms of the road, we're also welcome the investment plan for the A9 and A96, but what that in essence does is draw attention to those other parts of the network, which parts of the Highlands are reliant on before they can get on to those roads. Just to draw attention to a couple of examples, the A95, which is the road from Elgin to Avymor, takes an enormous amount of whisky freight obviously each year, which in arms value of export to the Scottish economy. We'd an example of a holier there who said that he'd spent £20,000 on wing mirror replacements just in the last year due to problems with the actual carriageway. We understand that there's obviously not going to be the same investment maybe for the A99 and A96, but we've tried to work with the local council there to develop some shovel ready schemes and we've done similar for like the spinal route in the western Isles. In terms of air, access to Heathrow is obviously of vital importance for the Highlands and that's something that we've put through our submissions to the airports commission. A fact on that is that 95 per cent of all long-haul seafood still goes through Heathrow and obviously all that's coming from a significant element from the Highlands and Islands area and it's how do we get the logistical problems of getting it to Heathrow and finally in terms of ferry, I'm sure James will have more to say on this but just capacity is an issue and becoming ever more on our regular ferry services to both the Orkney and to the western Isles and you've got the problem there of competing demands in terms of passenger expectations and also freight requirements obviously which can lead to issues like walkbooking and deck space. Is that a seasonal thing? Is it worse in the summer? It is but we've actually done a piece of work on this in order to understand that demand and what we've found is that it's growing so it's growing to peak periods from like Friday through to Monday but extends now into October, Christmas and Easter holiday periods as well so it's a growing problem. To what Neil said there's just some of the modal chef stuff because rail is a real opportunity for the very far north of Scotland to move from some of the stuff taking things longer by ship and burning more carbon it's very difficult to start into that process because of the restrictions because you've got to look at it as a commercial operation I'm quite sure there's opportunity if you can open up rail overnight to make sure you've got daily service and there's a whole lot of things on signalling and bits and pieces but also being able to support that because as far as Europe's concerned the whole argument about territorial cohesion comes in and we should be able to support that some way through more of the programmes from Europe to make sure that we get a thing you know I'm looking at Mike Nod in there but you know even Oban getting overnight freight on the rail takes it off the road huge advantages you've got a short supplementary and then Dave I think just on that point because I know kinds of stockings get some quite you know radical ideas and ambitious ideas and could you just be a bit more specific then about what you'd like to see in terms of improving rail a hobby horse that I believe that the far north of Scotland particularly Caithness 25,000 population in Orkney on top of that another 20,000 is a long long way away from the centre here we did some freight for supermarkets by rail that stopped because the chains moved on it's no longer a safe waste when they did this stuff but we've got a real opportunity to have an overnight service both ways and I would add on to that a bit a sleeper because there's going to be 85 sleeper carriages available shortly motor rail making a combination train and taking stuff up I think it's a huge opportunity to connect the periphery with the centre of the country in a in a radical way but you need to actually be able to put investment in with that and you've got the free up some of the blockages a few of the points that made already I think that last point about encouraging supermarkets big organisations to to commit to rail that's a good thing the marginal cost between rail and road might be different and it's about the corporate statement of intent that's always worthwhile I think the points made about last mile the last mile challenges and so on and urban transport clearly that's a big issue I wouldn't pretend there's a very easy solution that would applicable everywhere but I think this has been alluded to already we have some good practice examples from elsewhere and let's let's think about that and think about the use of electric vehicles and other means and information as well I think that's an important point as well let's have a system that's very easy to use in terms of rail freight as well in terms of infrastructure itself I think we'd see a few key things as as needing some some action in terms of the the rail freight terminals in scotland grangemouth moss ending coat bridge there is a need for some investment there particularly at coat bridge we know that could enhance capacity and also enhance the efficiency of operation of those centres we also know there's a lot of pinch points on the rail network in terms of rail freight just now some of those between grangemouth and Aberdeen a single track bottlenecks gauge restrictions in terms of tunnels and tunnels and bridges and so on and some action there would be very welcome and again as the previous speaker from the highlands alluded to we have an awful lot of single tracks still within scotland which is challenging for for rail so we want to see passing and crossover loops ideally of at least 775 meters to allow long freight trains to do that and we need a general enhancement and a lot of investment in rail that would benefit passengers would also benefit freight operation and talk about electrification and dual tracking where that's appropriate as well and I think the last last point to make is that there is we've heard about the A9 and the A96 corridors and there is a huge amount of public money being committed to action there over the coming 10 15 years or so about three billion on the A9 another three billion on the A96 and a smaller mount on on the rail infrastructure I think from our point of view we don't see any evidence that was an integrated appraisal done of the whole corridor for the A9 for example looking at the differences I mean as somebody who's uses the A9 I know that a lot of frustrations I think a lot of people have is the amount of hgbs there clearly action on the rail would remove some of that problem we know also that the journey from Infernes to Edinburgh is the optimal one really for business users for rail too short for flights but if you had an upgraded rail system you could you could get a lot of business users on the train because it's more user friendly in terms of working practices than the road that would take a lot of people off so why weren't we thinking really about the two together what needs to be enhanced in terms of road what needs to be enhanced in terms of rail and what could deliver the widest and best outcomes environmental socially and economically and that that would apply as much to investment that benefit rail freighters to benefit passenger services okay thank you can I move on now to ask you about your relationship with freight operators and if any of you have any good examples of how you've worked with them to encourage a more efficient operation but also if you work with them to help them to reduce their emissions and can I start by asking mr Matthews that question well as I said our focus is is more on the the passenger transport rather than on freight so I wouldn't claim to have any direct relationship with them I think it's been interesting to read some of the evidence submitted now about the the sense that a lot of people have that it's quite difficult to to use rail freight and so on and the stats are that rail freight has increased about 70 per cent since privatisation so something is happening there is some growth there seems that there are some issues raised in terms of how the market works it might be information has been touched on already it might be in terms of how how the system works I think a key challenge for freight providers is that they are generally seeking long-term contracts where demand is very much for short-term reactive transport and I think that's a challenge some of the infrastructure investment we'd like to see in the the rail freight industry might alleviate in some of these issues and make the make the system more responsive I think also in particularly on lines in northern Scotland where the freight volumes might be lower there may be a case for freight providers to collaborate more offering joint services than they do just now so I think there are some challenges there from the industry but I wouldn't claim to have any any insights beyond that like my colleagues and the other RTPs we do have a freight quality partnership which meets just again a bit every six months what we have done with that I mean the the attendance at that is is not just public sector but we have the ports the airport road haulage operators and so on involved in the freight quality partnership and what we tend to do with the freight quality partnership rather than just simply tell them what we're doing is to ask them what their problems are and as a result of that came the work that we did for a freight review of the Cestran region out of that came a freight map for the region which identified not just preferred routes for road haulage but identified where the rest areas were a review of the quality of the rest areas and the utilisation of the rest areas and why they're not as widely used as you would expect them to be so we've worked on that basis with through the freight quality partnership but also we engaged with the road haulage industry when the first threats came to the recife to Zebrug of Ferry at the time when Superfast pulled out how could we encourage the industry to make a first of all lobby for the reinstatement of the service and once the service was reinstated what were the key issues for them that would encourage them back on to the recife to Zebrug of Ferry rather than heading off to any new castle or the northeast of England or indeed further south and interestingly what came out of that we expected that it would be the cost that would be the key factor for them but it wasn't the key factor for them was one the quality of service they were never very happy with the previous operators handling of their trucks and the trucks get damaged on the boat whereas the new operators are much better than that but also the frequency of the service the timing of the service and the turnaround time between Zebrug and their destinations elsewhere in Europe in order to get to where they've got to go and get back to catch the next boat back to Scotland ship sorry and it's shipped back to Scotland so we worked very well with the freight industry on that area we have participated also with through our European projects with a number of freight operators who are actually bringing goods and services into Scotland from mainland Europe and one of the key issues that we were quite active on over the last 18 months or so was the sulphur directive for the North Sea which as you know was reducing the level of sulphur emissions dramatically and it's now in place and there were big concerns and and and we lobbied with the now cabinet secretary to see what could be done and as a result of that he chaired a couple of sessions in Victoria Key to raise the the awareness in the industry and raise the issues it's I think it's fair to say that it hasn't been quite as disastrous as it might have been in terms of freight costs because it's coincided with the reduction in the cost of oil based fuel so one has been compensating against the other the low sulphur fuels are more expensive but they're still cheaper because of the base reduction in the price of a barrel of oil so we've worked reasonably well with them and I think to be honest it's fair to say we could do more and and at the moment we are now getting rather than our freight quality partnership being chaired by someone from Sestran it will at the next one be chaired by the ex-director Scotland in the Rhodology Association in the shape of Phil Flanders and Phil is very enthusiastic and he's keen to get letters out via the Rhodology Association Freight Transport Association to all the operators and again what are your issues guys rather than here are the European projects that we have been involved in in freight is there a willingness amongst the operators to work together to increase efficiency because they are in competition with each other and how can you facilitate that this is to keep their answers as brief and succinct as possible we've only got just over half an hour for the rest of the session thanks chairman i'm not renowned for brevity and you should keep reminding me for that get a clock in front of me but you raise a particular issue in terms of competition and we firmly believe that there is a need for a neutral platform we're very keen to promote the idea in the fourth estuary of a gateway which would involve all the operators ports airports road rail that do business within that area in a joint management structure leading towards an accreditation of a sustainable logistics gateway and that's been tried elsewhere in europe and it's getting picked up elsewhere in europe and we don't want to see scotland lagging behind on that but to achieve that there needs to be a neutral platform where operators can share good ideas in a position of trust where they don't feel that as soon as they mention their operations the guy across the table goes away and pinches their customer and that's a big big issue particularly with road haulage and and to a certain extent with rail haulage as well and and there is a reluctance and it leads to the situation where which might mention where there is a serious lack of robust information on which to make sensible choices in terms of freight logistics because the information is all commercially sensitive and there's a real reluctance to share on it we believe firmly there is a need for that and you're quite right to bring it up mary i apologies i think we're gonna have to move on to question four dave thank you can be there i can ask you about sources of funding so for example our freight grant schemes working and helping getting freight offer roads and if we are perhaps the panel could tell the committee why there's been no awards for freight facilities grants since 2011 who would like to kick off mr cairns yes certainly in terms of funding looking at alternative sources we've found europe to be very useful source of funding there is a catch there in that we always have to get match funding to match one project we involved in provided 75% funding the other 50% funding finding a match funding can be an issue at times but certainly europe can can assist in that in terms of freight facilities it's possibly not just the the grant itself that's an issue we've worked with highland spring in blackford in persia for some years now on supporting the development of a railhead and knowing what has happened within the company it's possibly not ironically in this case the funding that's been an issue it's just been that the company having the right opportunity to develop it because they've been involved in company takeovers and mergers and so on and it's perhaps something that just goes towards the bottom of the list when they're looking at reorganising the logistics function as they take over the companies and as the market changes but certainly there are a number of issues that sink with freight facilities plant one is it it can only be subject to an application from the private sector and there may well be occasions where perhaps the public sector for example could take a lead on it that currently isn't permitted with with ffg so some revisions there might help and i think the timescale at times can can be difficult to work to as well so basically if we could try and get a more user friendly type of ffg then that might be a better take-up good word better yes yeah and in fairness there obviously have been awards for the water born grants i think in corpric for example i think it was 900 000 was successful mr mccray will be familiar with that but it did concern i think the committee when we looked at the records and found no awards since 2011 for ffg that clearly something's not working here i think we got evidence from the chief executive of montrose harbour and i think he was saying that the employed a consultant who worked it through and they got the grant but that was prior to 2011 does any of the other panamams of any i'll touch on europe in my next question but in the domestic grant applications has anyone else got any experience with ffg mr mccally sorry sir just a small point chair i think some of the feedback we've had from the road haulagers road haulage industry is where they would quite like to shift on to freight on to rail freight they find that in order to make the case for rail freight there has to be a relatively long term business case associated with it and a lot of the business on road freight is short term you know it's short term contracts that's done by phone and so on if we could get a mechanism where shifting on to rail is easier for that type of business i think it would certainly help and of course it's important that we look at joined up government this isn't i think it's important we don't say we've got transport over here and we've got climate change isolation on the other hand clearly if we can get freight off the road and on to rail we're going to do wonders for climate change targets which we haven't actually achieved have we in the last in the last few years has anyone any other experience about FFG and other types of grants before we move on to European funding models i was going to say some more but given the timescales i'm happy for you to move on for some of them we've covered already could the touch then convener on the experience of sourcing other types of funding via the european union for example 10t marcopolo and intereg and i think there was some suggestion i think and the evidence about the lifting of the spirit experience mr mccray perhaps your best place to talk on that yes baby kick off on that one i think lifting the spirit is a really good example of of where eu funding's been well applied we did a whiskey logistic study some time ago that identified the requirements of the whiskey industry in order for them to shift from road to rail and that helped to inform an application for the lifting the spirit project which was received at intervention rate of 65 per cent before going on at the detail of the project just to say that there have been other opportunities for that and i think in terms of eu funding what we would find rather than everyone putting their hand up and saying we need more money i think in terms of practical mechanism it would be good to know that there was a pot that you could apply into if when the opportunities arise because they can arise at any time and it's to have that flexibility because we've we've been able to bring in significant you know external funding and we'd like to you know do that in future if possible point and over as i'm sure in time i'm very enthusiastic about lifting the spirit which clearly was about bulk whiskey i had a hands on island regional issue which perhaps you could touch on and that was i was visiting glen range and tain and they were mentioning that all the whisky barrels which the panel will know come from the states because the bourbon barrels can be used once it's more efficient to ship them to glangemouth and i was saying to them well why don't you ship them to invigordon which reduces the amount of road because currently all those to glangemouth and they're all trucked north and to marion so on have you looked at that aspect of transport seems to me a bit daft that we're shipping them there from we can be shipping them to a nearby port and then regarding port and so it does have the facilities for that in terms of the specifics i wouldn't wouldn't be certain but i think it might well be gage issues in terms of you know the load from elgin to grangemouth was taken by Aberdeen and it might be the practicalities of actually taking it on the elgin to Inverness section that is is actually the factor and but if i can supply with more information on that i will do thank you anyone else got any other experience of european funding mr mccallan chair we've been involved heavily with interreg and mainstream erdf for a number of projects i think the key issue with that is if you think the bureaucracy associated with the rail freight grant is difficult try doing a european project because it is absolutely outrageous the amount of bureaucracy involved in european projects and i'll give you a prime example if you attend a meeting in a european project by air you need to keep the boarding pass the actual confirmation of the booking is not good enough you need to take photographs of yourself at the meeting it's absolutely insulting to professional people the amount of bureaucracy in european projects so i think anything that the scottish government can do to encourage the EU to simplify the bureaucracy it would be a major advantage there and by comparison we've had very good experience of for example the bus improvement fund i know it's not the subject of this inquiry but they still have targets to reach they still have the requirement for a submission but the administration of that by the scott by the our colleagues in transport scotland has been streets ahead of the administration of any european project we've ever been involved in and all credit to the scottish government in transport scotland people for administering these grants much more efficiently and sensibly than the european commission does okay mr matthews have you any experience of european funding nothing really tired of being very supportive of lifting the spirit i think that was an excellent project ensures what can be done but i think the points i'd raised have all been covered already okay any other members wish to contribute just to say briefly as alec said the bureaucracy is is quite breathtaking at times especially for what can be quite small sums of money the two problems i suppose with europe is one the match funding issue and the other is is the programming and generally speaking you get fairly short notice of when the funding opportunity arises so you've got to have a scheme that's just at the right stage to then be able to apply for that and then there are the issues quite rightly a lot of projects are transnational of actually finding partners in the rest of europe who also have schemes just at that exact time in the right sort of right sort of fields so it can be challenging from that point of view okay is having any experience of the marcopolo funding we submitted two bids on that we had to go through a procurement process to get an operator on board at the very outset of it so it was an considerable upfront investment of it the first bid failed because we didn't apply for enough money misinterpretation of the rules the second bid failed primarily because the commission felt that the leg across between recife and zebra was in competition with commercial services and therefore it failed we didn't have the opportunity to go for a third bid to actually solve these problems because our partners in Norway lost interest and people moved on so the marcopolo and motorways of the sea is not easy but other countries seem to be able to do it much better than the UK does and I think there is to be honest much more government support for those types of bids in countries like Spain countries like Italy where they are much more successful in getting motorways of the sea. I'm very conscious of the timing convener so I'll finish on that but I think perhaps that's some food for thought for the committee to raise with the minister when he comes to our committee in a few weeks. Thank you, James, you have some questions. Thank you convener. We've already touched on the urban consolidation centres but do you have any other comments about the pros and cons of such schemes and how they could be applied in the Scottish context and further to that the night deliveries how you see the benefits of that any barriers there are and how you could what you would suggest to help remove those barriers. Certainly the benefits have got to be significant to just quickly quote some figures in Dundee between seven in morning and seven at night 2007 commercial vehicles entered the city centre putting that into context it's actually not the HGVs are only 22 articulated vehicles it's actually the smaller white vans it's just under 1700 of those entering Dundee city centre every day and that sector is growing a lot of those are not well loaded the logistics sector is very efficient within individual companies and for individual customers but across the whole sector there are a lot of lightly loaded vehicles working exclusively for one customer so we can see that there is significant scope there to reduce the number of vehicles and consequent benefits in terms of carbon emissions. I just come in at this point sorry I don't mean to interrupt you must have a chance at that because that does kind of lead you on to another question I was going to ask about collaboration and do you see any scope for that and any sort of suggestion of people moving forward on that? I think it's really got to be led by the public sector it is a very competitive business and as we found with our experiences with trying to develop consolidations as in Perth and Dundee the private sector is very protective of its own market we've been through an exercise where we went out to tender to try to identify a logistics operator to set up a consolidation centre in Perth that ultimately failed I'd just very briefly say that that's actually not an uncommon experience in one of the European projects we've been involved in actually in London London River Camden put in a consolidation centre for the council's procured goods so it wasn't one open to the market open to retailers and so on their initial advertisement attracted 15 operators but when they actually put the tenders out they only received two tenders so that's the sort of market that we work in is there's one or two operators who are very interested in consolidation but almost across Europe it's just not attracting the operators themselves to invest in it or to look at it we've taken a different approach and I understand that you've been to the Netherlands and met with Beninstads service through the European project we've actually worked with Beninstads service and had some events in Perth to try to attract entrepreneurs in and we're hoping that we've been successful in that we've got a social enterprise company based in Dundee that is actively developing a business plan to produce to introduce consolidation in Dundee and Perth we've introduced them to other smaller logistics companies and we are hopeful that by trying to develop something organically something fairly local that won't be seen as a threat by the larger operators that that can't go from very small beginnings serving five or six shops it can develop in a similar way that the Beninstads service in the Netherlands has done so we would say that is the way forward and I think the experience is generally across Europe seemed to be that it's difficult to get the established logistics operators actually interested. Do you have any comments? My final question then is round about the carbon emission targets and the use of technology they obviously some of that technology has potentially make freight transport more efficiently, less costly and more sustainable and also along with the integration and collaboration can you describe for the committee your experience in pulling together some of these to make things more sustainable? Briefly, chair, I promise. We've had a couple of fairly significant initiatives on that as part of one of our European projects we carried out a review of best practice for logistics operators which identified best practice across not only the UK but across Europe with some examples of that and as a result of that review we produced a set of guidelines for the industry which is effectively a checklist it's like a QA checklist and it's targeted at those who procure logistics those who operate logistics because what the two different sides of the market can actually do is different depending on how they're operating. Those guidelines have been published as part of the European project they're on our website but again it is a drop in the ocean in terms of getting the visibility that we really need throughout the industry. One of the other areas of interest that was of interest to us and one of the barriers to shifting to rail and shifting on to short sea shipping is being able to track and know exactly where your load is at any given time of the day. You can do that with Rodol, you need to do that with the driver on his mobile phone and he'll tell you where he is but we've worked with European partners in developing more track and trace and I know that that exists throughout the industry in various different bespoke facilities, this would have been a track and trace that would be available open platform for all and also the development of a route planner a multimodal route planner and that again would be available on the web and available throughout the industry. The downside with that particular initiative is actually getting the information for the route planning because the route planner is not just about availability of services and frequency of services it's also about prices as well and actually getting that information from the operator to go on to an open platform is very very difficult just now so all of these and all of the types of work that we've been doing in our European project are all aimed at trying to get the carbon reductions and achieve the carbon reduction targets of the government which I have to say will not at all be easy in the transport sector. I just think there's a lot of work going on to make on ferries and things to make them much you know get the technology right to make sure that we get you know to get the carbon reductions in there and one of the things that I do think needs to be looked at is where there is government intervention and support to make sure that we look to the future make sure that we're going for the lowest carbon option on that and I do think there's a fair bit of work to be done there but we are beginning to look at some of these things too. Thanks very much. Thanks convener. Can I ask the panel basically what they think the highest priority is for government spending on infrastructure from the perspective of improving rate logistics in Scotland? Highest priority? My highest priority would be an open platform for information booking and comparison of different services for multimodal freight movements and as I said before I don't think as an investment by government that is a major investment you could probably achieve it for a lot less than some of the dualling schemes and the road schemes and the rail schemes that we would really like to see but if you want the highest priority it's information. Okay so how much would that cost would you reckon? How much would it cost? Well I think governments get more experience in developing IT platforms than I and I would ask you the question how much do you think that would cost but I would suggest that it would be a lot cheaper than dualling the A1 all the way down to the north of England. Well would it give me an answer to the question of whether or not Scotland should have a deep sea port and do away with all this road haulage south to the English deep sea ports? It wouldn't do away with the need for other infrastructure investment. It would assist and facilitate multimodal shift. Would it give me an answer to that question? No it wouldn't give you an answer to that question and I would suggest also that in terms of a deep sea port as you're all aware Babcox have proposals for a deep sea port on the fourth estuary which would be a container port it would be open 24 hours a day 365 days a year in terms of tidal access to it. It has been a difficult process for them to get to where they are today but I'm sure that they will achieve that deep sea port on the fourth in due course and it has been featured in the past in NPF3 documents and supported in NPF3. So I wouldn't take away from the need for a deep sea port for Scotland but in the meantime let's get better information. Quick run round the panel on that one. Highest priority? Highest priority for us I would say is that the model changes to rail to invest in that to make sure that it's accessible more of the time and we know be able to take the weight and have reliability but as far as deep sea ports are concerned I have got to mention this when I get the chance the whole opportunity for scap of low is there if there's a shift in the north-east and north-west passages if they become open to trade for more of the time it's a huge opportunity for Scotland if we don't grasp it and I'll go to Norway or the pharaohs or somewhere else and that'll be one of the biggest modal shifts that's when you come into a major project for Marco Polo and for 10T for government support that's a complete game changer and it's not pinching trade from someone else it's actually changing the whole european dynamic and we need to be prepared for that and we can do it in clever ways to by having floating stuff we don't have to dredge we don't have to build there's a unique ways to do in that we've got to keep our minds open to that because that would completely turn them up on its head. In terms of well okay I take your points on these but in term we've heard evidence from several witnesses that we need an overhaul of freight policy Scottish government freight policy and you'd mentioned earlier about the the pattern of ownership in our ports in particular have given us problems shall we say no more than that where do you think freight policy initiatives could could bring us benefit tempted to say we're not short of policies I think I think there are lots of policies out there national regional local supportive of freight supportive of various different aspects or transport what in my view we need is actually a mechanism to implement it and we need if that is a policy if you class that as a policy issue then fine that's that's what we need is a mechanism to implement it and I mentioned before the need for a neutral platform where freight operators can collaborate without the office of fair trading or whatever they're now called accusing them of setting up a cartel where they can openly exchange information particularly on environmental improvements to freight logistics we need to have that we need to do that because at the moment one individual operator cannot achieve everything that we would all I think collectively want to achieve in terms of freight logistics it needs to be a collaborative approach and it needs to be a collaborative approach which does not undermine natural competition how you achieve it is is not easy but there are examples of it having been achieved elsewhere in Europe through different mechanisms so if you call that policy yes that's where I think we need a major policy review if you call that implementation that's where I think we need an implementation review and one of our freight operators the big one of the big retailers who as you know operate their own freight systems came out with a lovely word of co-opetition and it was a deliberate choice of a new word that he would like to see in the marketplace let's try and achieve a situation where we get co-opetition in other words they can co-operate freely and openly but they can still co-op it still compete one with the other in terms of their own businesses so thanks thanks that I would call for presumably transport Scotland or the Scottish government actually initiating that kind of approach I presume that's what you're you're looking for it would certainly call for them supporting such an approach certainly in Cestran we're looking to try and achieve that through the fourth gateway initiatives that we're trying to get european funding for and so on but we would look to Scottish government support it would it could not work without Scottish government support okay I'm sorry I'm having to to rush on here given our time constraints the last question I have is with regards to the planning system do you see it currently working effectively in terms of promoting the freight sector in scotland maybe mr cairn to you that's a difficult point is lots of the planning system is reactive it's responding to to developers proposals I think there's certainly a case for if you're trying to promote rail looking at a national rail terminal policy because clearly within our region there's no rail terminals at all in central scotland it's perhaps not the best answer for example garange man for three separate terminals if you're starting from scratch to produce an effective terminal you'd work with one which would be open to various customers so I think there is a role for the planning system but I think the difficulty with freight is that it is so market driven you can only create the conditions but it's really got to depend on developers coming forward with proposals NPF 3 is a step in the right direction as was the NPF 1 and NPF 2 and I think the inclusion in NPF 3 of initiatives to get better rail connectivity to the ports is very welcome but as Mike says what is missing from that is initiatives for better connectivity by rail overland by rail not necessarily the last 50 or 100 miles connections to the ports so when you look at the rest of the UK I think Scotland is in its planning context in that it has a national planning framework it's got a national transport strategy it's got NPF 3 our colleagues south of the border would envy that to be honest but it could be better and as Mike says in terms of development management when you get down to the detailed nitty gritty of managing applications they tend to address local issues there is initiative on going at the moment with incestran that came out of the regional planning strategy for cross boundary analysis of the cross boundary transport initiatives and transport Scotland to their credit are taking a lead on that we're all cooperating with them to do that and that really is a recognition of the fact that the development management and indeed the local planning system tends to deal with local issues and there is a need to look beyond local issues and beyond regional boundaries and indeed to look beyond Scottish boundaries and I think that the NPF 3 is a step in the right direction and it is an evolving process and hopefully NPF 4 will be addressing the areas that are missing in NPF 3. Thank you. David you have the final question. Could each of the panel members give the committee one example of best practice in Europe of freight infrastructure schemes which are perhaps used a mixture of private sector or public sector funding and to perhaps answer my own questions I tend to do when we were in Rotterdam recently they were given the example of the dedicated freight rail line that they'd set up which is a fantastic example which is an enhancement for the whole of Europe of course Rotterdam being Europe's largest port. Can I start with Mr Matthews? I think the challenge is obviously system here is different in a number of ways to that operating in other parts of Europe but I think rather than point to any particular example I just say that you know it's clear that other parts of Europe some of the central European countries they get this much better and we do the infrastructures there, the balanced appraisal of different options is there, the thinking across corridors, the thinking about integration is there and so rather than focus on individual projects I think going back to my earlier point about say how we look at investment along say the A9 corridor it's about that appraisal system and that way of judging costs and benefits and so on and taking into account why do economic social environments appraisal. I think once that investment flows it's there. The other thing is just that simply the amount of investment in a lot of other European countries over a longer period of time has been there and that's clearly beneficial to both passenger rail and also to freight travel as well. So would you say in sort of simplistic terms that we're more mid-table than winning the championship in terms of freight infrastructure? Yes, I mean I said there are clear pinch points here in Scotland we have some antiquated infrastructure in terms of the rail freight terminals we have an awful lot of single track and inadequate infrastructure for rail north and south of the central belt in particular so I think it's you know I agree with other points things that information are very important the way information technology has moved on we can overcome a lot of the challenges around half full vehicles charging around emitting a lot of emissions and cost loss economic thing but as with so many things a lot of it does come down to investment in the infrastructure the other point to make is that the money is there we have a huge amount of money allocated for different transport projects I think from our point of view just we'd argue that the priorities are not necessarily the best priorities in terms of what we've chosen to spend that money on and the way we've chosen to spend it. I've probably got about half a dozen good examples and I'll happily pass these on to Jason rather than take up the time in the committee today but there is one example in Sweden excuse my pronunciation of it Almhult in Sweden which is a dry port and it's not a big dry port one of the things that we found when we did our analysis of dry ports that if you've got the huge populations and the big movements of freight you can get the private sector in to develop a dry port and it can work successfully where it's more difficult as if you're in the marginal and Scotland in general tends to be at lower volumes this is one that's relatively low volumes it's in Sweden and it serves the ports of Malmo and Stockholm and it was developed when Ikea pulled out of it but it was developed in partnership with the municipality the local government in terms of developing it and that local municipality input has provided the sufficient public sector input in order for what probably was quite a marginal or a negative business case actually to flip over and become positive and start to achieve some of the environmental benefits in that region but there are a number of them there's a number of examples also of very good co-operation in the private sector operators in Switzerland in Germany in Italy as well where you have partnerships between the road hauliers the rail operators and the freight forwarders in one company and the road hauliers still compete one with the other the rail companies still compete one with the other but the grouping brings it together in order to provide this neutral platform in order to to improve it and I'll happily pass these on to Jason. Very helpful Mr Cunt. I'm certainly impressed by the example of the Norwegian post office initially working in Trondheim but spreading throughout the rest of Norway and they're going for largely missions-free deliveries in city centres and what they've actually done in Trondheim they've completely replaced all their diesel powered vehicles through a combination of electric powered trolleys so more deliveries particularly of larger bulky parcels could be made on foot instead of using vans the vans that they have used have all been converted to full electric and the larger vehicles for the bulk loads are using hybrid vehicles now that they've done it's it's a government owned organisation but arms length so similar to what the Royal Mail was about two years ago say but it has required considerable amount of support to make the investment in electric vehicles and they've had difficulties actually sourcing them in Norway the too far way for example from the Mercedes Benz to supply so there are issues there but certainly looking at Norwegian posts they've gone a long way to reducing and in lots of cases eliminating carbon emissions and local air pollutants give that Mr McRae. I think James. Well just going to say we've heard about lifting the spirit project but a spin-off from that what that was really interesting was the fact that other local food producers in the area were backhauling and using that and may continue to use that in the future and you know you're just involving other groups I think there's far more in these things than we could ever imagine and that I thought was quite exciting that you do one thing and it brings other people on board as you collaborate and work with industry and you get something you get another result you weren't expecting but maybe a something more to say. No I think it comes back to just the wider questions about planning policy as well in terms of how we apply EU directives and whether state aid or territorial cohesion is actually comes more at the forefront in terms of just a more proactive and not interventionist but facilitating that co-operation I think and I think that's done a lot better in a lot of well some Scandinavian countries but elsewhere in Europe too. Appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Can I thank all of our witnesses for their comprehensive evidence this morning and can I thank you Mr McAulay for the offer of additional supplementary written evidence on European case studies. The committee will find that invaluable I'm sure as it takes forward this important piece of work. Thank you very much. I now suspend this meeting briefly to allow for a changeover of witnesses. Thank you. Can I welcome from Network Rail and Mackenzie senior root freight manager and Nigel Wunch head of strategy and planning. Good morning. If I could kick off clearly Network Rail has a responsibility for investment and maintenance in the rail network. You're currently working on a Scotland root study which will look at the upgrades and investments that are required for future growth both on the network and economic growth. Can you provide the committee with an update on the work of the study and how this is informing future planning for the rail network in Scotland please. Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to talk to you this morning and to help you with your inquiry. The root study which is the current part of the long-term planning process that we're working through is there to look at what the industry needs to invest in over the next 30 years so we're really looking at what we want to be in 30 years' time in 2043 for the rail sector across both freight and passenger business. So the work that we're currently doing has been looking at what the demand is likely to be in that sort of timescale and based on that demand what train service would be required to deliver that and inevitably that will be a significant growth in both the passenger and freight business both the number of passengers, the volume of freight and the distances that are travelling is expected to grow. Based on that we then need to look at where the pinch points are, where the gaps will be in the infrastructure and how we would best fill those gaps, what are the opportunities to do that and what would we want the network to look like by 2043 and we then work back from there to say okay if that's what we want to get to 2043 what are the steps we need to take between now and then to deliver that. The route study is scheduled to deliver a draft for consultation by the end of this year, end of 2015, that will then go out for wide consultation and certainly based on previous experience elsewhere in Great Britain there will be lots of views and comments based on those we'll then produce the final route study which will be published in the middle of 2016, that's a regulated document, the officer of rail regulation need to approve it and that also feeds into our initial industry plan for the next five-year control period starting from 2019 which is what we'll be bidding to the Scottish Government to invest in our recommendations what should be the investment for the next five years. Mr Mackenzie, if you have anything to add. Okay and I don't know if you had an opportunity to hear the previous evidence session but we heard evidence from a number of witnesses that the investment priority should be in the model shift from road to rail freight, is that something that you envisage being looked at as part of the study? Oh absolutely, we believe very strongly that there are many flows for which rail is ideally suited particularly larger longer distance flows and bulk flows where rail is the ideal way to transport those sort of traffic and we anticipate investing both in the ability to run longer trains on the network and investing in improvements in gauge to allow particularly on the angle Scottish flows bigger containers to be operated on standard rail wagons. Clearly you don't want to pre-empt the outcome of the study but there's a number of issues that are emerging both through this inquiry and the evidence that we've received and the wider debate and discussion around rail freight in Scotland and one of those is the one that you've alluded to in terms of improvements to capacity but also we've heard from the rail freight group about the lack of long overtaking loops, the fact that so much of the network remains single track, the inadequate length of crossing loops and so on and are those issues moving up your agenda? Yes, evidently the longer we can operate freight trains where the demand is there the more efficient it is and the better use of capacity. Short trains are not a good use of the limited capacity in the rail network so the ability to operate longer trains is definitely a benefit. We've recently done quite a lot of work for example in the West Highland line where we now run trains that are actually longer than the loops with special arrangements so that when they pass passenger trains while they're in the loop and allow the longer freight trains to operate which has improved the viability of those trains for the freight operators. However you have to say that we can only run longer trains where the demand is there and on some routes there isn't the demand for that volume of traffic. That needs the longer trains but there are lots of routes on which East Coast Main Line we would like to see longer loops because it would make the operation of those more flexible and similarly operate longer freight trains on the West Coast Main Line coming up from England via Carlyle to Glasgow or to Moss End in the Glasgow area and they also are longer than a lot of the loops and again have to be carefully managed to avoid delaying other services. Is it fair to say therefore that through the study and the bids that you'll be making for investment from government that you'll be seeking to address the significant infrastructure capacity issues and pinch points that exist on the network? Inevitably the East Coast Main Line will be high up the list of priorities that there are starting to be definite capacity pinch points for both passenger and freight between Berwick and Edinburgh and even down as far as Newcastle, which is obviously out with the Scottish Government's remit but that's really the section of route that's relevant but also going north of the central belt towards Inverness and towards Aberdeen where we're currently investing as part of this control period in improvements to the Highland Main Line between Perth and Inverness aimed at reducing journey time for passenger trains, increasing capacity for passenger and increasing capacity for freight, so some of that will almost certainly include longer loops or longer sections of double track. One of the issues that's been highlighted by David Spavin of the rail freight group was the channel tunnel and the potential as yet unrealised and unfulfilled for that route to fulfil free requirements in terms of moving freight by rail. There was a suggestion that that hasn't happened and it's unlikely to do so without proactive support to pump prime an initiative for a Scotland to the European mainland freight train. Do you have a view on that? I'll let Ann come in on this one because I think that's probably something that Ann's very better place to answer but yes, inevitably, if you could encourage greater use of freight through the channel tunnel there would be more freight, you could get more freight on rail. I think you have to think carefully about where you're trying to get that freight to and remember also that the freight market is a commercial market and there are risks if you start affecting that market that we get into competition issues and state aid issues. I agree with Nigel. I agree with David Spavin as well that sometimes pump priming would be ideal for a brand new service. It does take critical mass to actually get a new train up and running and sometimes when there is low volumes to start off with it doesn't quite justify a train but if you pump priming to start off with the volume could then follow. There is potentially volume to have a train direct from Scotland to Europe via the channel tunnel. It's coming back, that's the issue. You probably have to go via one of the English terminals in order to get the volume to come back up to Scotland at this time. Okay, thank you. I've got a final question as an Edinburgh MSP in that is in relation to improvements that are already under way in the network and one of those is the electrification of the Edinburgh south suburban line. Is there anything that you can say that would be of interest to people in Edinburgh? Certainly we believe that electrification of the Edinburgh south suburban line would be a benefit to freight. It would ensure that freight traffic can be electric hauled via the east coast main line and across the central belt. At the moment quite a lot of that traffic has to be diesel hauled because there isn't the capacity through Edinburgh Waverley, which is the only electrified route for that sort of traffic to operate. Edinburgh Waverley is full with passenger traffic and we want to avoid freight passing through there. If we electrify the Edinburgh suburban line we would then be able to divert and operate more electric freight, which is more efficient, longer trains, better collage capacity and generally better acceleration. We propose that as part of our initial industry plan for CP5. It wasn't included in the Scottish Government's priorities for CP5 but we are continuing to work with the Scottish Government in Transport Scotland and anticipate that it will be part of the priorities for the next control period. Is that fully costed as a proposal? We continue to do the development work on that to get a final current price for it, which we will include in our initial industry plan again for CP6 for the next control period. I am very enthusiastic about electrification, not least to the Highlands, which I think would be vitally important. Certainly talking to the industry, they are very keen on electrification, not least because it also matches the issue of climate change targets. You heard my question earlier about that point that we tend to put transport in a different view. We should be taking an integrated approach from saying that we believe in climate change in any policy that we have, therefore electrification makes a lot of sense. You touched the point that I was going to make. It is much better for acceleration and much better for maintenance. I have had several examples where we have had train breakdowns in bad weather, say at Dremoch, for example. That is less likely to happen before electrification in terms of efficiency and reduced costs on maintenance. With all except the last point about electrification over Dremochter, I have concerns about making sure that electrification is robust in the climate that we get up there. It is very exposed in the winter. In many ways, electrification can be vulnerable. With the exception of that, I agree with the point that you make. I strongly support that we should be electrifying. On the climate change comment, I would be keen to see that transport is looked at as a whole. The rail industry has targets imposed upon us to reduce carbon emissions. To me, the most efficient way of reducing carbon emissions for the country would be to move more traffic on rail, but that would increase our carbon emissions because we would be running more trains and we would have to invest in more infrastructure that creates more carbon, embedded carbon, as we build new bits of railway. That is a one-off, is it not? It is a one-off, but it affects our targets. The way that we are targeted is about reducing our carbon emissions. While I am fully in support of improving the efficiency in a carbon sense of how we operate the railway, nevertheless, the more traffic we haul, the greater our carbon. Can I ask what changes in demand for rail freight are anticipated over the next few years? We know, for example, with the announcement regarding Longannet, that coal trains will be a lot less coal trains, presumably, starting next year. What action do you need to take to ensure that the Scottish Rail Network, hopefully, will be meeting more demand in other areas in the future? How are you going to anticipate that and how are you going to deal with it? I think that you are quite right. As I said earlier on, we anticipate significant growth in other sectors of the market. We are not quite sure of the future at the moment with the changes in Longannet. That is all relatively recent news, and we are still trying to get our minds round the changes that will bring to the coal flows across Scotland. In terms of other markets, we anticipate intermodal markets, both domestic and international, growing significantly. We see over the next 10 to 15 years a 50 or 60 per cent growth in that. The industry is capable of handling that. We need to invest in certain particular locations, and we talked about that earlier on when I was speaking about the route study. I anticipate that that is looking very much at what does the market need in the next 30 years and how do we get there? The market study that was done on the freight as the requirements as part of that route study process across the country showed significant growth across a number of sectors. The coal traffic forms 62 per cent of the product that we move on rail in Scotland, but over the next 30 years, as Nigel mentioned, intermodal traffic is forecast to grow significantly. By 2043, the forecast would still give us some growth, even though the coal has potentially disappeared by that time. That is what you mean about the 2043 date. I think that most of us around this table will be dead by then, so I am more looking at it. The immediate future is obviously something that the next 10 to 15 years is what we have a particular focus on. Clearly, we have heard today, this morning, from the regional transport partnerships that they are looking for a significant shift from road to intermodal shift from road to rail haulage. What are your plans or how do you anticipate that moving forward? The significance of the 30-year horizon is that rail infrastructure is a long-life infrastructure. When we are investing in rail infrastructure, we need to think about the cycle of renewals that we go through, so track and structures and signalling all last in the 15-plus year. In fact, some of the bridges are probably in the 120-year cycle. We need to be having that long-term look, but you are quite right. We want to get freight on to rail and growing in much shorter timescales than that. That, as I explained earlier on, is part of the whole route study process. We look at the long-term and then draw back from there and say, okay, based on that, what do we need to do in the next five to ten years? Currently, we are investing in the current control period in loading gauge improvements to allow bigger containers from the east coast main line across the central belt towards Moss End, which is the main freight hub and up towards Grangemouth. Going north from there, we are looking at how we can get bigger containers going further north towards Aberdeen of Ines. Inevitably, given the major infrastructure constraints and the number of tunnels and significant bridges—for example, for example, where we cannot really cut bits out of the cross girders because they do not really do it any good—we need to look at how we get bigger containers across without doing that, and how we can invest as an industry in lower platform wagons. Lower platform wagons are quite expensive to build and slightly more expensive to operate, but are probably still a cheaper way of coping with the volumes of traffic that are likely to be going across Scotland north of the central belt. However, the current industry structure and government structure in terms of grants that are available is more about fixed infrastructure and not about investing in rolling stock to meet that need. So, would you like to see a shift in emphasis away from fixed infrastructure to a more operational type of support? I am looking at both. It is a balance. We need a balance between the two. Can I ask on a different subject what impact do you anticipate from HS2 on the free flow of rail freight from Scotland? I think that the key thing about HS2 is that it is targeted at leaving congestion on the routes out of London. The routes out of London are already significantly congested. From a Scottish perspective, if we cannot get down to the London area and across London towards the Channel Tunnel and towards the major ports of Felixstow and Southampton, we are more isolated. The advantage of HS2 taking significant amounts of passenger traffic off the west coast mainline at the southern end south of Preston frees up capacity on that route for local passengers' journeys and for greater rail freight. If we can get greater rail freight on those congested bits of the infrastructure, then they can come further north into the north of England and Scotland. To do that, we also need to invest in improvements to the infrastructure on what we might call the classic railway north of Preston, where the current in the shorter term—that is probably up to 2043—is unlikely that HS2 will get as far north as that. To do that, we are looking at longer loops on the west coast mainline and potentially, over the next 10 years, some freight bypasses that allow some short sections of new route that allow passenger and freight to be separated up the steeper hills of Beattock and Shap and allow passenger trains to overtake slower running freight trains. Okay, well, maybe the outcome of the general election might advance that a little bit. We'll be waiting to see. Okay, thank you, Adam. I'm confident that all of us around the table will live long enough to see the conclusion of this inquiry. Mary, you have some questions. Yes, thank you. We've heard an evidence about the need for additional capacity on east coast mainline and we've talked about a number of these issues this morning already, a bit longer passing loops, double tracking. You talked yourself about freight bypasses and improvements to the west highland line. Are there any other specific parts of the Scottish rail network that limit the expansion of rail freight? If you can identify them, how can they be improved and where are they on your list of priorities? There's a lot of questions there in one. We'll see if I can walk my way through them. It keeps the brain going. Okay, so you're right. We've covered a number of the highest priority places in the conversations we've had already. Are there limitations on the network? Of course, there are limitations on the network. The challenge for us is to balance where the demand is going to come from and to where we therefore get best value for money out of that investment. The routes that we've talked about, west coast mainline and east coast mainline, connectives with England and onward St Aberdeen and Abernes and Grangemouth as some of the key freight hubs, are the critical points where we think that the investment will get the biggest return. If the demand is there, then going beyond that up into the west highland line or up into the far north line, one could spend significant sums of money to improve those routes, but it's very difficult to get that balance because when the demand into these areas is much lighter. We do run freight traffic on both the far north line and on the west highland line in terms of the demand that's there today. We're not aware of that demand being frustrated by lack of capacity at this stage and, hopefully, the route study will help to identify where that might be a problem in the longer term. I suppose that part of the problem is that if you improve the network and you do the work, the traffic will come. Freights are not using rail because they can't, so they use alternative means of moving freight, but it is a bit like building a house of people all come. If you improve the network, the freight will follow. I wish that that were true. Unfortunately, we've got a number of examples where we have improved the network and the traffic hasn't come, despite the predictions, forecasts and appraisals that were done. I'm going to name names. Race Farm in Dice, just north of Aberdeen, was a big investment that we did with partners in an improved freight facility in the Aberdeen area. Now, people can now, with hindsight, look back and say, oh, but it's in the wrong place. That was where we were encouraged to put it and that was where people wanted the freight facility at that time. The volume of traffic going through Race Farm is very low. There are other examples that we could quote where we've been encouraged to invest gauge clearance to Elgin. A good thing to do, and we'd love to see container traffic going up there. There is capacity on the network for it to operate very small volumes, lifting the spirit being the only example that has used it, and much as a success that was, it hasn't been followed up with commercially viable traffic following on from it. One thing that we have heard in our evidence sessions is the priority that's given to freight and concerns have been raised that freight has to wait for passenger trains to move through. The longer passing loops is obviously a problem there as well, but what evidence have you received about the desire to give freight a higher priority, and how can you broaden the movement and the times that freight is allowed to move, particularly at the weekend, because freight can't move over a Saturday night into a Sunday? I don't think I would go as far as saying that we give priority to passing your over freight in the way that you describe. In timetabling terms, we have to reach a balanced timetable of all the operators. There's obviously great pressure on the rail network to reduce journey time for passenger trains. The best way to run a railway is if all the trains run at the same average speed, so if the freight trains were able to go at the same average speed as passenger trains, then they all just twindle along together. However, in much the same way as the dual carriageway helps over a single carriageway for a road vehicle so that lighter weight and faster cars can overtake lorries, having more loops allows passenger trains to overtake freight. However, we develop timetables that allow to get that balance and get the journey time that freight customers desire or as close as possible to the journey time they desire, but still allow the passenger trains to operate. Where we haven't got that capacity, we do look at opportunities to invest in more capacity to allow that. In terms of when traffic can run and restrictions are otherwise, yes, we haven't need also to find time to maintain the network. We try and do that at the times when the network is least in demand because we are a very safety conscious industry and we do our very best to manage and keep trains and people apart. Trains and people on the network together is not a good thing and, therefore, to maintain the network, we are much more safety conscious, I believe, than the road network. For example, we do not have people wondering about putting cones out and wondering about motorways, but we do have to restrict the passage of trains while we do that maintenance work. Most routes, from a passenger perspective, the quietest time is a Saturday night into Sunday and that is the time that we do maintenance of the network. Over much of the network, where there is a demand for freight traffic, we have looked to balance that and we do focus the maintenance opportunities in as short a spell as possible. We talked about the Handerson-Longannock route, which runs very much a 24-hour day, six and a half day a week. We focus the maintenance on those sections of the network into very short spells, but we need to find some time to do it. Has any study been done on the impact of freight on the restrictions, particularly on a Saturday night? Not specifically, I do not think that we are not aware of one of the issues. I think that we really need to talk to the freight operators more than we do, but I believe that one of the issues for the freight operators is that when we are doing the major maintenance works on a Saturday night, we also require trains to support that with conveying rails and ballast and so on to the sites where we are working. Many of the freight operators are involved in that, so they have got to balance their resources to find those resources to do that. From the supermarket's point of view, they want a 24-hour day movement and roads to have no doubt that benefit in that there tends to be ways around it. When the roads are quiet, you can close bits of the network and allow maintenance to happen and still find bypasses that get you around that. We have some examples of that, but it is expensive to have that capacity to deliver that so that you can run traffic during maintenance periods. You mentioned previously that there has been some discussion about loading-age restrictions, but I wonder if you could be a bit more specific in terms of, in a strategic sense, other particular pinch points that you would prioritise and try to deal with and other perhaps innovative solutions that might tackle those other than just, wall wagons obviously make sense, but perhaps some other solutions? We have obviously done quite a lot of work in terms of gradually improving the gauge for container traffic, both the west coast main line and the east coast main line are cleared for most containers, and we have recently, for example, demolished the tunnel at Carmure's, which is one step along the way to improving the gauge facility to Grangemouth. Where else would we go? It would be nice, as I said earlier on, to go north to Aberdeen and to Inverness, but there are a number of structures that would be very difficult to clear to the full gauge. We do things like lowering track, as well as raising bridges, but all of those things have a cost. Lowering track increases longer-term costs, because you then create a dip in maintenance costs longer-term, because water gathers and drainage becomes more of a challenge. We have tried various ways of delivering that, but it is also around the volumes of traffic that you are trying to move, that you need that critical mass that I referred to in order to justify the investment of significant sums of money. As electrification comes along, one of the things that we have to do for electrification is often to build new bridges. As we build new bridges, we generally will build them for higher gauges, not just for electrification but for bigger containers. Over the next few years, for example, the shots route between Edinburgh and Glasgow via shots, the gap will be electrified and, as part of doing that, we are starting to raise structures that will, in due course, give us clearance for bigger containers over that route. Again, we are competing with the road network, because in building and raising bridges, new bridges have a disruptive effect on the road network. We have to work closely with local authorities to minimise that disruption, because, from their point of view, the local disruption to the road network is often more disbenefit than the benefits that they see from the bigger bridges from the real perspective. I am half-anticipated by my next question, which is about electrification. I wonder where you feel the priorities are for more electrification. The benefits are fairly obvious, but where do you see the priority areas? Where is it most likely to happen next? The current funding takes us, fills in Glasgow and Edinburgh, as you know, i Egypt, including up to Stirling, Dunblane and Allawa, which will get us to the point where most of the traffic in the central Scotland is electric called. As I said, we are also funded to complete the shots line by 2019. We are currently in discussions with Transport Scotland about priorities beyond that. We anticipate, for example, that the remaining Glasgow suburban network would probably be the next place that we would like to infill one or two routes, such as East Kilbride and Barhead, not of great benefit to freight, but definitely of benefit to passenger services. Going beyond that, the discussion is about how we go north from Glasgow, Edinburgh, eventually towards Aberdeen and Burness. The challenge that we are currently in discussion, internally, with the industry and with Transport Scotland, is about what order we do that, because, really, until you complete that whole section, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Burness, of which includes all the fife, the bridges across Forth and Tay, a significant number of tunnels, and includes the exposed route that I was mentioning earlier on across the passes that go up to Burness, until you complete all of that, you do not really get all the benefits, because you will always have some bits of the network where you are running under diesel trains under the wires, unless you get to the by-mode situation, and we know that at least one of the freight operators is currently investing in by-mode locals, which will allow trains to be hauled electrically when they are under the wires, and diesel when they get off the electrified bits of the network. There are benefits there. We have also, as Network Rail, been working very closely with the industry on looking at independently powered electric trains, so battery operated. We have done some experimental work in England when running successfully and passing your traffic on the Harwich branch, an independently powered electric unit that allows you to go up to 50km off the electrified network and is ideal for short branches, which currently do not have overhead lines, but can run mostly under the wires and then go on to them. We are looking at lots of different options. Some of the electrification that we have done in Scotland recently has some innovative ideas under some of the bridges where we have not had to raise the bridges, but by having short sections where the wires do not carry any electric power. That is a benefit and reduces the costs. Conversely, there are cost pressures the other way in safety terms. For example, we are now required to electrify lines to raise parapet heights and bridges to very high to improve safety and to stop people from being able to throw things over. There is a significant cost associated with that, which increases the costs of electrification. That is very interesting. You just mentioned that the progress northwards will be in the longer term. Can you give us an idea of the time scale or any of us around the table to see this, or is it beyond our lifespan? I would not have thought it beyond our lifespan. That depends on how quickly the Government wants to specify doing it. The current control period asks us to electrify about 100 km a year. If we take that forward, I believe that you would complete to Aberdeen and Burness by around 2030. To refresh the Scottish Government's freight policy, all policies need to be reviewed on a rolling basis. I am not a great believer in big bang. We will go and do that now and then we will leave it for the next 10 years. Those are the things that you need to keep reviewing as circumstances change. I am sure that there are things in the Scottish Government's freight policy. I do not know that transport Scotland is reviewing their freight policy at the moment, along with other things that it is reviewing. In terms of whether there are specifics, I am not sure whether I knew what to comment on that. I cannot remember the real freight policy. Was it last issued? 2006 was the last formal issue of it. I believe that they are currently refreshing it at the moment and anticipate that it will be published in the next six to twelve months as a refreshed document. Those things are changing relatively slowly. My preference is not to have big bang refreshes, but gradually, as things crop up, you change them. Do you believe that our current planning policies and our planning systems are efficient and effective as far as real is concerned? I think that it was quite disappointing that the NPS3 did not contain any projects for real freight. It mentioned the strategic importance of Grangemouth, Coatbridge and Mossend, but there were no specific projects in there to take strategy forward. That is potentially a missed opportunity for real freight. Let us hope that the NPS4 does look more into real freight. Going beyond that, the planning world needs to think about the impact of rail beyond the rail network. I think that there are a number of examples where planning has allowed housing, for example, close to rail, where people then build their houses and then complain that their house is next to a railway and it makes noise. That is also an issue when people are talking about greater night-time traffic. Unfortunately, most people feel that they want quiet at night. If they live next to a railway that is running 24 hours a day or even 18 hours a day, then there will be noise during the night from the trains passing. That is something that the planning network needs to take account of, I believe. The parallel with road. We have heard lots of good examples of where there could be night-time deliveries, but that is the point that I made for you. I was discussing if you happen to live in the state of Glasgow when you are next to a large warehouse that is now having 24-hour delivery, and you are not going to be very happy. Integrated planning is really important. In the last session, you have deferred the question that I asked about best practice in Europe. Could you identify a best practice of where you saw rail infrastructure being top of the tree? It is a fantastic example that we should be monitoring. Just to refresh you, the best practice that I was identifying was Rotterdam harbour, which developed its own dedicated freight rail line. The example that I said at a previous session, but not today, was that they mentioned that boats that are sailing past Italy for goods to Italy do not stop in Italy. They go right round to go into Rotterdam and then use the dedicated rail freight service to get to Italy, which was a fantastic example of how they have developed that. What should you use in that particular project? Can you identify any other best practice that the committee could identify? I am not entirely familiar with the exact detail of the Rotterdam example. I think that the biggest issue for Rotterdam is that it has huge volumes of container traffic. Nowhere in Britain has that volume of traffic demand. As I understand it, the deep-sea shipping lines want to call at as few ports as possible and unload as many containers as possible at those locations. They want to do the long haul and get rid of all the containers in one place and then use short-sea shipping or rail to deliver. From a British point of view, the only ports they come into is Southampton and Felixdale, but in many ways they would rather just go to Rotterdam, unload in Rotterdam and then use short-sea shipping to get to the ports around the coast of Britain. Grangemouth, for example, does quite well out of that sort of traffic. Equally, that draws away from the rail perspective, because if the ships were using Felixdale or Southampton, the containers would then generally come by rail from those ports to Scotland. There is a balance, and maybe overall for the economy of the country and the carbon emissions and so on, the ship option is overall better. That is not for me to comment on, but there is a balance there. In terms of building bits of networks specifically for freight, we obviously have a number of freight branches that are dedicated to freight traffic, so Grangemouth is probably a good example. Where we go to the port, there is very little traffic that comes from the port. We take quite a lot of traffic into Grangemouth from the south from bulk consolidation points in the south of England that come up to Grangemouth and then get distributed from there. However, I think that the issue in terms of learning from Europe is that much of the British market is so different in terms of both the volume and the distances that that freight traffic can go within Britain. There are not that many lessons that are similar to what happens in Europe. I am sure that we talked earlier about high-speed rail, and certainly one of the lessons from Europe in terms of the French network, for example, has been that they have invested in high-speed rail where the volume of traffic is such that they need new railways. Both the French and the Germans have very much gone down. We have a capacity issue here, so let us invest in a new railway to relieve that capacity. That creates capacity on the old railway for more freight, and I think that is probably a good example. Do you see any examples in Scotland of developing more freight-only lines or reopening perhaps very short rail lines? Obviously, we have got quite considerable extra railway lines if I use the beaching example where there was a line in the past that has been closed down. Do you see any examples in the short term? I think that Allaway has some direct freight only, does not it, on the line? Perhaps you could give some examples to the committee about that. Obviously, an Allaway line through to Concardin and on to Longannock was opened as a freight line. That gives us largely, say, a longannock power station. An interesting question. Will we go with the closure of Longannock power station? There is some freight on that line through to Fife. It gives you a gauge-cleared route into Fife for container traffic, which we have not currently got because of the restrictions on the fourth bridge, or we did not previously have because of the restrictions on the fourth bridge. I think that we are always open to opportunities if the traffic volumes are there, but it is a bit chicken and egg. I accept that until you have got the line that you will not have the traffic, but it is finding locations where, when you build the line, the traffic will appear. Again, we have talked about that. I do not know if you have got any specific examples on them. We have reopened lines in the past, but it is mainly looking for cold traffic. Where there is the bulk to justify having a train. I have not got any examples of the recent past or in the near future where we are thinking about opening lines. That is perhaps something that the committee can do a little bit more work on, in terms of looking at European examples, but I thank you very much for the questions and the answers that you have given. Thank you, convener. Do members have any final questions? Is there anything that you would like to say by way of closing? I do not think so. I think that we have covered most of the issues that we wanted to do. Obviously, we welcome the significant investment that the Government has made particularly through the Relief Rate Investment Fund. We are using that over the current control period, as efficiently as possible, to deliver those improvements that we have talked about. We look forward to a similar investment going forward along the lines that we have been discussing. Okay. Thank you very much. In that case, it remains for me to thank you for your evidence this morning, which is greatly appreciated as we take forward this inquiry. That concludes today's committee business. I now close this meeting. Thank you.