Environment
Benefits of freight over road
As businesses give greater consideration to their corporate social responsibility, rail can provide a significant step change in greening supply chains in addition to proving to be a safer way of transporting goods.
- Rail overall produces less than 1% of the total UK emissions of Carbon dioxide compared to 21% from road transport - Railway Forum 2005
- Per tonne carried, rail produces between five and ten times less emissions than road transport - EWS March 2007
- Carbon dioxide emissions from road hauliers increased by more than a third between 1990 and 2002. Road freight now accounts for 8 per cent of UK carbon dioxide emissions. - Department for Environment, food and Rural Affairs 2005
- Over the past 6 years alone rail freight is estimated to have saved two million tones of pollutants, 6.4 billion lorry kilometres and 31.5 million lorry journeys. - Rail Freight Group
Facts as per the Freight on Rail website as of October 2008:-
The benefits of switching from road to rail can be expressed in monetary terms by calculating Sensitive Lorry Miles (SLM). SLM values have been calculated for key rail routes to and from the Telford International Railfreight Park and are estimated to equate to a net annual environmental benefit of £679,000. Under the Rail Environmental Benefit Procurement Scheme (REPS), the net environmental benefit is used to determine the availability of grant to support the operating costs of switching from road to rail.
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