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Parent Category: Network Rail

Safety is at the very heart of Network Rail's - and the Government's - justification for these masts. In the House of Commons on 21 May 2004, Keith Hill, Minister of State in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, described the masts as "Network Rail's new safety system", and went on to say that their introduction "is primarily safety driven. It will implement a key conclusion of the Cullen investigation into and report on the Ladbroke Grove rail accident...."

The Cullen Report's support for a nationwide communications system is the first plank in Network Rail's case for the masts. They call it "a key recommendation" - in fact, it's number 51 out of 89 recommendations, of which 41 were designated as 'key'.

However, if you read the Cullen Report itself, a rather different picture emerges from the one Network Rail paints.

First of all, all the trains involved in the Ladbroke Grove crash (which took place on 5 October 1999) already had in-cab radio systems.

In fact, the train that caused the crash was equipped with CSR, and Lord Cullen concluded that, if it had been used effectively, it would have prevented the accident! He blamed Railtrack's management for failing to train signalmen to use it properly in an emergency. His only criticism of it was that it was only installed in the south of England.

A similar combination of effective technology and incompetent usage occurred with the Southall crash - the train that caused that accident had, not one, but two safety systems installed: the basic Automatic Warning System (AWS), which sounds a buzzer in the cab when a warning signal is passed, and BR-ATP, Railtrack's version of the more advanced Automatic Train Protection (see below), which applies the brake if the driver fails to stop. They did not prevent the crash because neither was working at the time - the AWS because it was broken and the ATP because the driver was not trained to use it so it was switched off.

The Cullen Report also makes favourable comment about First Great Western's experiment with issuing conventional mobile phones to its drivers and conductors.

We have extracted the relevant passages. Alternatively, you can read the full report (PDF 3mbs).

It's important to remember that rail is already the safest form of transport by a wide margin. Read PDF article by Norman Bradbury (65kb) published in Railwatch, November 2002. It shows that (measured by fatalities per 100 million kilometres travelled) rail travel is over 27 times safer than road travel.

Here are four quotes from a report (808kb PDF) published by Railway Safety and the Strategic Rail Authority in April 2002, called ERTMS: Towards a Better, Safer Rail System, from the Strategic Rail Authority's site. (ERTMS stands for European Rail Traffic Management System, of which GSM-R is part, and ATP means Automatic Train Protection):

As TPWS [Train Protection and Warning System, which is already operational on all UK tracks] significantly mitigates ATP-preventable risks [preventing over 80% of them], the relatively small additional risk reduction achieved by ERTMS (once TPWS is installed) appears not to be justified purely as a safety investment.

ERTMS… will address the majority of ATP-preventable risk. This equates to a maximum estimated saving of 83 equivalent lives over the next 40 years. By comparison, UK road deaths are currently running at approximately 66 per week [our emphasis].

On this basis, the approximate capital cost per equivalent fatality avoided is between £75 million... and £45 million... over 40 years.

This means that there will be other potential safety investments, on and off the railway, which deliver much greater safety benefits [our emphasis].

However, the Health and Safety Executive, in Train Protection - Review of economic aspects of the work of the ERTMS Programme Team, (1.5mb PDF) published in 2003 , gives an even lower estimate of the safety benefit of Network Rail's preferred version of ERTMS: “Our own estimate is that the risk, at today's traffic levels, with TPWS and TPWS+ but without ERTMS, is one fatal ATP-preventable accident in about ten years” [our emphasis]. With an estimated four fatalities per accident, this would work out at £267.5 million per fatality over a 40-year period. (TPWS+ is an up-rated version of TPWS, which works at higher speeds.)

The same report criticises the ERTMS Programme Team for ignoring one "politically important" risk: "namely, that of an ERTMS-induced multi-fatality accident in the early days of ERTMS".

If the money is to be spent directly on rail safety, it would be far better spent on track maintenance and staff training: of the four recent major crashes, two (Potter's Bar and Hatfield) were caused by poor track maintenance, and the other two (Southall and Ladbroke Grove) were primarily caused by poor training resulting in the failure to make use of the technology already available, which if it had been used would have averted both accidents.

If saving the most lives for the money spent is the objective, the £4.28 billion Network Rail is planning to spend on ERTMS and the GSM-R network (let alone the amount it would probably end up spending) would be far better spent on improving the reliability, punctuality, comfort, and convenience of services, and subsidising fares more heavily, in order to attract road-users back to rail transport (thus cutting their risk of death in transit by more than 95%). No doubt regular rail users would also appreciate more reliability, punctuality, etc, plus lower fares!

Unfortunately, Network Rail is squandering so much money on ERTMS and other grandiose schemes (all justified in the name of safety, though rail is by far the safest form of travel already) that money earmarked for road improvements (many of them genuinely safety-related) is no longer available. An article on the subject, called Roads facing axe to meet rail bill, was published in the Daily Telegraph (1 April 2004).

Yet road improvements give a far higher pay-back in terms of safety - in the report ERTMS: Towards a Better, Safer Rail System, Railway Safety and the Strategic Rail Authority state, in a footnote, that the DTLR's (Department of Transport for Local Government and Regions) 'appraisal value' for cost per road fatality avoided is £1.14 million, "although the actual spend per life saved on local authority highway safety schemes is understood to be very much lower".

In fact, according to the Commission for Integrated Transport, the amount spent on road safety is less than a tenth of this 'appraisal value':

The Ladbroke Grove Rail Inquiry, Part 2 Report includes a "Joint statement of experts on risk management" which records that several experts observed differences in government planned and contemplated expenditure on road and rail safety: the actual expenditure to prevent a road fatality is around £0.1 million [our emphasis]; and the cost per fatality avoided by fitting TPWS is about £10 million.

CfIT's initial assessment report on the 10 Year Transport Plan, Part 7, 22 May 2002

According to a news release by the European Road Assessment Programme, called Cutting road deaths is cheap - but we can't do it, say councils, the cost to prevent one road fatality in many areas of the UK is just half that figure, at £50,000 or less - but no money is available.

Network Rail is clearly aware of, but not in the least abashed by, this disparity. In fact, in a breathtaking display of spin, it uses road-users' far higher fatality rates to justify the adoption of ERTMS Level 2 (which requires GSM-R) rather than Level 1 (which the Uff/Cullen Report recommended): it argues that Level 2's (hypothetical) increase in capacity would allow it to attract more road-users back to the railway, thus saving between 300 and 700 road fatalities over 40 years. The Health and Safety Executive Report cited above disputes these figures: “Our own estimates suggest that the EPTFR (ERTMS Programme Team Final Report) overestimated the increase in road fatalities, for their assumed lost of rail capacity, by a factor of four or five.”

In any case, the 36,000 road-users' lives that could be saved by spending the money directly on road safety don't figure in the calculations at all.

Details

Parent Category: Network Rail

Details

Parent Category: Network Rail

Network Rail claim that erecting these masts on their own land falls within the "permitted development" they are entitled to under Part 17(A) of the Town & Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995, or GPDO, which concerns 'Railway or light railway undertakings'. Permitted developments do not require planning consent. This privilege dates back to the 19th century, long before the advent of mobile telecommunications. There is no limit on height under Part 17(A). The GPDO also contains specific provision for telecommunications masts: Part 24 (Development by Telecommunications Code System Operators) and Part 25 (Other Telecommunications Development) of the GPDO, which covers other mobile phone operators and limits them to a mast height of 15 metres unless they get planning consent. Network Rail argue that these provisions do not apply to them.

Article 4 of the GPDO can be used to restrict or prevent permitted development, but councils are very reluctant to use it, because they may have to compensate the developer; it is used only in exceptional circumstances, eg in Conservation Areas or for buildings with Grade 1 listing. South Hams District Council served an Article 4 Direction on Network Rail to prevent them putting a GSM-R Mast in front of Totnes Castle (Listed Grade 1*). Paragraph 46 of Planning Policy Guidance 8: Telecommunications states that "where a particular rural or urban location seems likely to attract obtrusive or inappropriate telecommunications development which would seriously threaten amenity, the Secretary of State will give sympathetic consideration to directions submitted for approval."

There are several reasons why Network Rail may be wrong in its interpretation of the existing GPDO, which are explored in an excellent section of the Planning Sanity website *. The author argues that, since Part 17(A) applies only to development "required in connection with the movement of traffic by rail", that development cannot be used, wholly or partly, for any other purpose. He then cites evidence that Network Rail plans to use the GSM-R masts for "customer information systems, as well as for more general business needs" - neither of which is directly relevant to the movement of rail traffic. The author also argues that Part 17 is in violation of Article 6.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Principles.

Another, and maybe even more telling, reason for disallowing Network Rail's claim to immunity under Part 17(A) has been pointed out by Patsy Calton, MP for Cheadle, in Parliament and on her website. In a written reply to a parliamentary question, Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Transport, revealed that the masts erected 18 months ago on the West Coast Main Line are still not operational - indeed, there is no prospect of them becoming fully operational until 2015 (see Delays? So what!). According to Mr Darling, they don't even support GSM-R voice traffic yet. How then, she argues, could Network Rail claim that they were "required in connection with the movement of traffic by rail"? Mrs Calton has written to her Council's Planning Department to ask that enforcement action be taken against Network Rail for erecting a GSM-R mast in her constituency.

Indeed, even if Network Rail expect to be able to implement simple driver-to-signaller voice radio in the near future using GSM-R, it is certain that they don't need so many and such tall masts for that purpose (see GSM-R masts: why so big, and why so many?). It is clearly illegitimate for Network Rail to claim permitted rights for any mast that will not be used operationally for more than a fraction of its capacity for nearly 10 years.

The Planning Sanity website referred to above also argues that, even if Part 17, which covers railway infrastructure in general, is applicable, Part 25, which specifically covers microwave antennae, should take precedence.

Nonetheless, Network Rail, backed by the Government, insist that the masts are to be considered as railway infrastructure and not as telecommunications masts. Just how principled this position is can be judged by the facility with which they reverse it when it's convenient for them to do so (see below).

The Government is reviewing the planning process, in particular Permitted Development Rights. The main purpose is to speed up planning decisions by extending these rights, but it does seem possible that Network Rail's 'rights' under Part 17(A) may be curtailed. A report, Review of Permitted Development Rights (976kb PDF), is available from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). Read relevant excerpts.

However, even if the Government does change the law in time to prevent the erection of 2000 33-metre masts, it would be a Pyrrhic victory if it resulted in the erection of twice or three times as many 50-foot (15-metre) masts in their place. In any case, there seems to be no good reason why the masts have to be so big and/or numerous

EU Directive 2001/42/EC requires an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to be carried out for major projects, to ensure that the environmental implications of decisions are taken into account before they are made. This should entail the publication of a report and a public consultation exercise. In the Guidance on EIA (400kb PDF), item 3.13 in the checklist is: “Is the landscape or townscape of the area that may be affected by the Project described, including any designated or protected landscapes and any important views or viewpoints?” Directive 97/11/EC, which updates Directive 85/337/EEC (see consolidated version 78kb PDF) lists projects requiring EIAs in Annex I. Item 7(a) of that list is: “Construction of lines for long-distance railway traffic”.

Clear enough, you might think. We wrote to the Environmental Assessment Branch of the ODPM, which is responsible for environmental assessments, to ask whether the EIA had been completed and, if so, where we could get a copy of the Report and details of the public consultation exercise that took place. Here was the ODPM's reply:

In regards to environmental impact assessment, erection of telecommunications masts are not projects that come under the Directive 85/337/EEC on "The assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment" as amended by Directive 97/11/EC. UK EIA Regulations do not, therefore, require EIA for such projects.

There we have it in all its Orwellian elegance: as far as the GPDO is concerned, GSM-R masts are not telecommunications masts but part of the railway infrastructure; as far as Directive 97/11/EC is concerned, they are not part of the railway infrastructure but telecommunications masts.

Even the ODPM seems to be ignorant of the extent of Network Rail's powers. In Paragraph 5 of the evidence submitted to the All Party Parliamentary Mobile Group in April 2004 (Word doc), the ODPM boasts of its:

…national policies for the protection of the countryside and residential areas, in particular our National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, conservation areas and Sites of Special Scientific Interest. The installation of any communications mast in such areas, and of a mast of more than 15 metres in height elsewhere, is subject to a full planning application. [Our emphasis]

The last sentence is just not true, of course - because of their privileged position, which the ODPM supports, Network Rail can, and do, erect masts of any height, anywhere they want, regardless of local concerns (or maybe the ODPM has been taken in by its own casuistry and believes that they really aren't telecommunications masts at all).

There is another legal avenue that applies to Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty: Section 85 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 states that "a relevant authority shall have regard to the purpose of conserving and enhancing the natural beauty of the area of outstanding natural beauty". "Relevant authorities" include statutory undertakers (which includes Network Rail) and local authorities. This is in Part IV of the Act. The Catch 22 with that legislation is that, according to DEFRA (the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, "whether an authority is in compliance or not would be a matter for a Court to decide" - DEFRA itself does not get involved.