STRATEGIC RAIL FREIGHT INTERCHANGES
NO ONE can deny the need or urgency to get more freight on to the rails, particularly the growing intermodal traffic from port to inland distribution centres.
Recent high-profile attention on climate change, NOX emissions and the need to cut pollution are becoming the drivers of such change. The fact that it’s cheaper to manufacture something in China or Korea and ship it in a container halfway around the world doesn’t help the pollution issue, but is a completely separate debate.
Strategic Rail Freight Interchanges (SRFIs) are not new. One of the first locations to combine a rail terminal and warehousing was the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal, which opened 20 years ago, and is now expanding into a third development phase on the former Rugby radio station site.
SRFIs may not significantly change the traditional method of handling containerised traffic – such as Felixstowe to Lawley Street, Birmingham – where the container arrives by rail before being taken forward by road to its end customer.
SRFIs have the credentials to optimise the process through on-site warehousing and provide a greater all round benefit. Surprisingly, some end customers and logistics companies still collect and deliver containers to and from ports, but SRFIs are aimed at cutting the primary long-haul movement up and down motorways and major A roads such as the A14.
Rail Freight Group director general Maggie Simpson explains: “SRFIs are not new, with the first of the current generation built in the 1990s. The Planning Act of 2008 set out the case for their onward development.
“The concept
