Scotland is doing ok at electrifying its railways

England, not so much

Electric trains are better than diesel ones. They are faster, more reliable, quieter, cheaper to run, cheaper to maintain and are better both for air quality and the climate.

Trains in the UK are much less likely to be electrified than they are in many other developed countries.

One of the often stated reasons for why Britain has done such a poor job of electrifying our railways is that we have a ‘feast or famine’ approach to procurement:

This makes it difficult to learn lessons from previous projects. It also makes it difficult to retain a work force. If you worked as a 20 something on the East Coast Mainline electrification in the late 80s and early 90s you might now expect to be very experienced in electrification. Instead you likely changed careers or moved abroad during the 30 year period where Britain barely electrified any railways at all. The next big project was the Great Western Mainline and Midland Mainline Electrifications. However, both of these have stopped due to running massively over budget. For workers who gained experience on these projects there is very little for them to work on. They will likely emigrate or change industries. Every time we build a new project the work force needs to be trained from scratch.

But saying that Britain does this is a bit unfair. More accurately it would be that England and Wales do this. North of the border a steady pipeline of projects has been underway for over 20 years.

With the slow but steady progress of its rail electrification programme and its more reasonable costs, Scotland looks far more like a pretty normal western European country compared to the rest of Britain.

A steady pipeline of projects

Since 2005 Scotland has had a steady stream of electrification projects, with at least some rail electrification underway almost all of the time.

It has long been the case that if you are travelling between England and Glasgow or Edinburgh you are likely travelling on an electrified railway. In the last 20 years improvements in the central belt mean that almost all commuter trains into Glasgow, all trains between Glasgow and Edinburgh and some commuter trains into Edinburgh are now electric. Planned improvements mean most commuter trains into Edinburgh will likely be electric by 2031. There are also longer term plans to electrify up to the northern Scottish cities of Perth, Dundee and ultimately Aberdeen and Inverness.

Cost impact

Scottish rail electrification programme is likely a little on the expensive side by European standards. But compared to the vast majority of English and Welsh projects most Scottish projects are incredibly cheap.

This is pretty noteworthy as Scottish projects are delivered through contracts awarded by Network Rail, exactly the same as they are in England.

Scots (probably) do it better

Rail electrification is the clearest example, but it is probably the case that Scotland is slightly better at building all types of transport infrastructure compared to England and Wales.

The sample sizes are small, but Scottish projects do seem to be cheaper on average than their English equivalents in other areas too, even when controlling for the lower population densities that surround some Scottish projects.

Scottish readers may be surprised given the national scandal of the incredibly expensive Edinburgh Tram, but when it comes to getting value for money from transport infrastructure, Scotland is almost certainly doing a better job than England.

Devolution has probably helped with this

In some ways Scottish success is hard to explain. Their processes look pretty similar to England’s. Their funding is at a similar level. And for rail electrification uses the same UK-wide nationalised organisation (Network Rail) procuring from the same private companies that build infrastructure in England.

I strongly suspect that the reason Scotland gets results closer to the European norm is that the power for making decisions lies at a similar level of government as it does in Europe. Most European countries are small. Those that aren’t have decision making made and projects funded at a sub national level.

National and regional governments making transport decisions for populations of around 5 million people is the norm across Europe. In Britain, Scotland and Wales are the exceptions.

England should follow Scotland’s example. Much more transport decision making should be decided at the regional level. It is absurd that the Mayor’s of major conurbations like London, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire do not have the power to make basic decisions about what is built and how it is funded in their regions. This is not the case anywhere else. But Scotland shows that it is possible for the incentives for decision makers to be better when dealing with smaller populations, and that this can lead to more and cheaper infrastructure.