Royal Mail to switch from rail to road

Friday, 6 June 2003 12:00 AM

The Royal Mail has upset rail unions and environmental groups by announcing that it is to stop transporting post by train.

Mail trains are to be cancelled gradually from next month, with the service stopping completely next March. Royal Mail says that transporting post by road will be both cheaper and more reliable.

The RMT union has said the move is threatening over 500 jobs at the Plymouth mail depot and more around the country. Green groups are also condemning it because the move will result in an extra 160,000 lorry journeys a year.

Royal Mail has a built-in price advantage in using roads: it owns a fleet of vans and lorries and does not pay VAT on road transport; it has also been criticising the reliability of the railways for years and believes it is paying too much for the service.

Royal Mail's logistics director, Paul Bateson, explained that there is a marked difference between the price they believe they should be paying for rail services and that which was on the table.

'Quite simply, other forms of transport can give us the same benefits, in terms of flexibility and quality, but at a lower cost,' he told The Guardian.

Mail has been transported on the railways for 173 years and the move is likely to be a blow to the government, which has a policy of cutting road pollution and congestion by shifting freight transport to the railways. Transport Minister Alistair Darling has set a target of increasing the amount of freight on Britain's railways by 80% over 10 years.

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