How green is my valley?

25 October 2007

Pursuing a school boy hobby of train spotting at Birmingham's Tyesley station IM Properties' commercial director never dreamt of developing a rail terminal which would bring environmental benefits to the region.

In a valley hidden from view of passing traffic on the M42 motorway close to Tamworth is a transport interchange development that is fast adding to the regions green credentials.

Birmingham Intermodal Freight Terminal (BIFT) the region's equivalent of DIRFT (Daventry International Freight Terminal) opened to containerised rail freight in July last year. It acts as an inland railhead receiving containers from deep sea ports such as Southampton and Thamesport. Its customers are global and influenced by the huge output of factories driving the 'Dragon Economy' the majority of containers received are from the Far East. A high percentage of the contents are consumer goods to satisfy the avaricious demand of high street retailers.

BIFT is where it is because the Midlands is simply the heart of the country and because the location at Birch Coppice Business Park had the available development land and a railway branch line link to the national rail infrastructure funded by a £multi - million investment by Warwick based developer IM Properties.

The development company had an established reputation for the regeneration of major brown field sites but to transform a derelict coal mine site of several hundred acres into one of the region's premier logistics parks was a task not for the faint hearted.

As a boy pursing a hobby with his train spotting mates at Birmingham's Tyseley station armed with the essential Ian Allan railway engine number books, Mick Jones, now IM Properties' commercial director could never have dreamt that his future role would embrace developing a privately funded railway at Birch Coppice in North Warwickshire.

Neither did he envisage that as a commercial property developer his endeavours would contribute to a greener environment. In 2002 TNT Logistics (now Ceva) was the first major occupier to relocate to Birch Coppice. Its purpose was to receive rail consignments of automotive components direct from Germany via the Channel Tunnel. The move saved the distribution company 8,000 lorry journeys a year equating to two million road miles. At the time a huge contribution to the reduction of road congestion and air pollution.

Then last year Gwyneth Dunwoody MP, Chair of the Transport Select Committee officially opened Birmingham Intermodal Freight Terminal in a move that added some hefty plus points to the reasons why rail freight is preferable to road transportation.

Mark Wynne, regional director of Roadways Container Logistics, operators of BIFT explains. 'Each container freight train travelling to Birch Coppice from Southampton Docks can carry approximately 33 containers in a mix of 20 ft and 40 ft long units. If there was no rail service the containers would travel by road.'

'In sensitive lorry miles, travel by train from Southampton represents a net national benefit of £3,000, according to the Department for Transport's calculator used for railway grant determination. Therefore 6 trains in a year, moving 5 days per week represent a national benefit of approximately £3.6 million per annum.'

'To put this in more digestible terms, a train loaded with 33 containers would take up road space of approximately one third of a mile and would use 120 gallons of diesel compared with 460 gallons by road transport. Six trains travelling for a year each way would represent 800 miles of lorries on the road and the trains would use about 1 million gallons less fuel than the equivalent lorries.'

A convincing argument fuelled by the Freight Route Utilisation Study published recently by Network Rail which predicts that container traffic on rail will rise between 43% and 83% by 2015.

Such growth could be taken as a wake up call for property developers and local authority planners to work together in replicating more BIFT's and DIRFT's. The call is echoed by the West Midlands Regional Spatial Study which highlights a shortfall of up to six rail served logistics sites in the region for large distribution warehouse and strategic rail interchange and intermodal facilities.

The criterion is a minimum of 123 acres (50ha), good road and rail access, suitable configuration for high bay warehouses, unrestricted 24/7 operation, access to a local labour pool and minimum impact on the environment.

Perhaps, four or so decades ago, standing on the platform of Tyseley station Mick Jones may just have indulged in a little day dreaming?