Campaign of the week - Freight on Rail

Bibi van der Zee
Tuesday September 5, 2006
The Guardian

In 2005 road freight accounted for an eighth of all UK carbon dioxide emissions: thousands and thousands of HGVs thundering up and down the country carrying sofas, DVD players, dog bowls ... you know, all those essentials we simply can't live without.

The increase in road freight over the past few years has been fast: Defra has estimated that the use of HGVs to transport food alone doubled between 1974 and 2002. If these things must be moved around so much (you are probably bored to death of hearing about food miles by now, so we won't go on about it here) why not do it by rail?

It makes so much sense, says Freight on Rail, a partnership of organisations including Transport 2000 and various transport unions. According to the International Railway Union, the cost of rail freight to the environment and the community is eight times less than air-freight, and four times less than road.

That turns into a nice source of cash for the railways (which could perhaps underwrite some of those less-used but much needed rural branches). Among the supermarkets, Sainsbury's has been moving some goods around the country by rail for a year now, and Tesco is running trials of its own rail-freight systems.

www.freightonrail.org.uk