COMMENT: Can trains really replace planes?

The Conservative Party, the main opposition group in Britain, is opposed to a third runway at London Heathrow Airport. It put out a policy paper last week in which it proposed scrapping plans for the runway and instead build a high speed rail link.

This would connect London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. There would also be a high speed link between London St. Pancras – home of Eurostar – and Heathrow.  The aim would be to build the new tracks by 2027 at a cost of £20bn, most coming from public funds.

The Conservatives are comfortably ahead in the national opinion polls and seem set to win the next UK general election, probably in 2010, so the prospect cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Put aside for the moment the intriguing politics as well as the economic and “green” arguments swirling around the plans for the third runway. Instead let us look more closely at what the Conservatives are proposing and whether it is feasible or practical.

It rests on scrapping 66,000 flights a year out of Heathrow. Currently London Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe in passenger terms, handles about 68,000,000 people and about 480,000 commercial movements a year.  The flights the Conservatives are talking about stopping are those to Manchester and Leeds/Bradford. (There are none to Birmingham as it is too close to Heathrow).

BAA, which owns and runs Heathrow, put out a conspicuously terse statement about the Conservative plans. “The total number of flights to Manchester and Leeds/Bradford is only 13,356 or less than 3% of Heathrow's total flights.

“Even if every flight from Manchester and Leeds/Bradford were replaced by a new high speed rail line then Heathrow would still be operating at 97% of capacity,” it said.

There is a discrepancy already. The Conservatives are aiming for 66,000 cuts while BAA say there are only 13,356 on the routes named. That’s a difference of nearly 52,000. Stopping 13,356 flights would not be enough to end the need for a third runway.

But the Conservative plans do not give any clue as to which other flights they will stop or whether it will build any more high speed tracks. This leaves their plan looking half baked.

To provide adequate high speed rail transport to cover the cutting of the remaining 52,000 flights, more than one high speed line would have to be built or the proposed one extended and branched out to cities like Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The problem here is that Britain comprehensively missed the move to high speed rail when France  and then Germany began to build the network of fast trains which now links their major cities. The only high speed track that Britain has is the Eurostar from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel. The country would in effect be starting from scratch.

The cost of building a network to rival France’s would be prohibitive. There is also the time factor. If it takes until 2027 – 19 years – to build the Leeds line, goodness knows how long it will take to build a whole network.

As one airline executive remarked to ABTN, it will not be possible to put the national economy on hold while this is done.

There is also a bitter little irony here. Thanks to a marked increase in the efficiency of British trains, more and more business travellers are using them. If the cut off point for a train journey is three hours before people start to choose the plane, both Manchester and Leeds are well within that time. Indeed the evidence is already that both are regarded as train journeys. Building a £20bn track to cut 55 minutes off the journey to Leeds looks a modest ROI.

But the point of high speed tracks is to put previously distant cities within the grasp of a train user. The French have succeeded brilliantly in getting cities like Lyon and Marseille into the rail orbit. The Conservative plans do not address this.

A further problem is just where the 52,000 other flights will be cut. If the number of passengers at Heathrow is growing at 3% or so a year and commercial movements also slowly increasing, scrapping 3% is not going to make much difference in a few years’ time.

Even if all domestic flights were stopped, Heathrow would still only lose about an eighth of its passengers.

BAA told ABTN that if enough flights were stopped to end the need for a third runway, “you would really have to start cutting into the European short haul market.”

He added: “Do you think BA, Air France and KLM are going to stop all their flights to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam?”

These flights carry passengers booked to fly on profitable long haul services from Heathrow, Schiphol and CDG. BA says that about 40% of its passengers are in transit and not travelling point to point. It would be ruinous to BA if feeder flights for these passengers were stopped.

Air France stopped a few of its daily flights from Heathrow to CDG because of the success of Eurostar – but it kept enough to feed its long haul services.

Nor is it likely that passengers arriving at Heathrow and needing to go onto Paris would much appreciate having to catch a train to Paddington and the Underground round to St. Pancras before boarding the Eurostar to Paris. It is likely they would find an airline to fly them direct to Paris.

There is one consideration which might appeal. The French and the Germans, far from deciding between high speed rail or air travel, seem to manage both. As high speed track gets built, major hubs like Frankfurt and CDG are expanded. It is called an integrated transport system.

For example, a high speed train journey direct from Heathrow to Paris Gare du Nord or Brussels Midi  might just appeal if the “green” side were promoted and the traveller incentivised in some way.

Most transport analysts believe that Britain needs both a third runway at Heathrow and a much improved and faster rail service to cope with the growth of travel.
The Conservative proposals leave too many unanswered question to be seriously considered as a solution to Heathrow’s problems, let alone the growth in travel.