The Rail Technical Strategy refresh: ‘Freight Friendly’ added
The new ‘Freight Friendly’ priority part of the Rail Technical Strategy is ready for launch, supported by our valuable research.
The Rail Technical Strategy (RTS) sets out agreed focus areas where novel technical solutions are needed to deliver for current and future customers. These are the five functional priorities.
Through these, the RTS helps facilitate long-term investment planning and foster collaboration across the industry. This year, it’s getting a full refresh. All the components of the strategy will be updated.
Under the steer of the Executive Technology Leadership Group, the RTS Engine Room—including RSSB, Network Rail, and UKRRIN—is engaging with lots of industry stakeholders to develop the revised content.
This update comes at an important moment in time. It aims to reflect the changes in rail and society in the past few years. Customers’ needs have changed, and there’s increasing pressure on the industry to cut costs, enhance value, and reduce emissions.
With this in mind, there will be an update to the stepping stones within the functional priority routemaps, which are the core content of the strategy. This is to inform and support progress over the next five to eight years.
In addition, the UK government recently set a goal of increasing rail freight growth by 75% by 2050. The aims are to reduce road traffic, and associated pollution, and grow the economy—and both, of course, are key.
Recognising this growing need to shift to greener transport solutions, a brand new functional priority is being added to the RTS for 2024: ‘Freight Friendly’. This launches at the RFG Spring Meeting on 15 May.
The focus on freight in refreshing the RTS is both timely and welcome, supporting and developing new approaches at a time when our customers are looking to move more by rail to reduce carbon in their supply chains, and government are setting ambitious targets for growth of the sector. RSSB’s research projects have demonstrated that more goods can be hauled by train without needing investment in new infrastructure or rolling stock.
We’ve been working with the Great British Railways Transition Team, the Rail Freight Group (RFG), and other stakeholders to learn where the challenges and opportunities are.
As well as leading the refresh of the RTS and supporting the development of the ‘Freight Friendly’ priority, we have a well-established Freight Research Programme. This has delivered valuable outputs in the past 18 months, including:
a report on low carbon freight modelling (T1229), which aims to help industry forecast traction energy needs
guidance on freight trailing length (T1302) and the calculation steps for maximum load limits.
In addition, our study seeking to revise the W10 and W12 freight gauges (T1327) is underway. This will allow more box/wagon combinations to utilise W10 and W12 cleared routes as well as open up more parts of the network to use these gauges.
These activities all support the sector’s net zero emissions goal and encourage more goods businesses to shift to rail freight.
Needless to say, freight is an important area of research right now, and the RTS’s new ‘Freight Friendly’ functional priority will help ensure that this important focus continues.
To explore the RTS, head to the dedicated website.
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