TARMAC THE TRAINS

 

 

 

Noel Hodson, 14 Brookside, OXFORD, OX3 7PJ

Tel 01865 760994 fax 764520 noelhodson@btconnect.com

 

 

 

Guardian Letters – 31st March 2004.

 

Any honest and intelligent engineer will confirm that railways, world-wide, are a grossly inefficient form of transport which may have been useful once-upon-a-time before metalled roads were developed. Running big steel chuff-chuffs  pulling multi-ton carriages on steel rails is great fun for bearded open-toed-sandalled enthusiasts - woo-whoo! -  but otherwise is a very silly, rigid, highly polluting way to transport goods and people. The £10B yet to be spent on the West-Coast line, which even then still will not function (Guardian G2 1st April 04), is enough to convert all the UK's main lines into motorways - perhaps toll roads for lorries and coaches - which would be busy for 50-80%% of the week as compared to the 2% use the heap-big-iron-horse makes of these routes today. Grow-up, get real, tarmac the railways and solve all the UK's surface transport problems for at least a generation or two. 

 

Noel Hodson

Tel 00 44 (0) 1865 760994

Business Projects Manager

Telework Consultant

OXFORD OX3 7PJ, UK

http://www.noelhodson.com

 

Due to spam I delete emails with blank or peculiar subject lines - so please complete the subject line sensibly.

 

 

 

 

 

Guardian Letters

Fax 020 7837 4530

 

24 November 2001.

 

If Ernst & Young’s calculations are correct that RailTrack needs an immediate £3.5B (Guardian Headline 24 Nov 01) and a “bottomless pit” of funding thereafter, the money would be better put to converting the rail-routes, penetrating to the heart of most town and city centres, into flexible bus, taxi and lorry roads. After the last huge estimates to fix the railways were published, The Guardian printed my tongue-in-cheek letter urging the UK to “tarmac the whole network”.  It brought a storm of be-sandaled and bearded protest, debate and argument that persuaded me to make some real calculations – to examine it as an economic proposition.  Railways have always been subsidised because they are inherently and mechanically uneconomic; in that they reserve exclusive use of broad carriageways through prime and inner city land, for vast, unwieldy steel monsters with steel wheels to run, often without passengers, on steel tracks. The Victorians also developed the gaslight and the steamship, but we do not cling to them with the same paralysing grip of mindless nostalgia reserved for railways.  Put the money into roadways Mr Blair and Mr Brown – and get Britain moving.

 

 

Noel Hodson,

14 Brookside, OXFORD OX3 7PJ

Tel 01865 760994 fax 764520

noelhodson@btconnect.com

 

 

 

 

Noel Hodson, 14 Brookside, OXFORD, OX3 7PJ

Tel 01865 760994 fax 764520 noelhodson@btconnect.com

 

 

Guardian Letters

Fax 020 7837 4530

 

29 November 2001.

 

 

Before 14 lane motorways are commissioned to try to relieve the UK’s traffic congestion and delay its journey into total gridlock (Britain en route to 14-lane motorways, 29 Nov 01), there is a serious case to be made for converting part or all of the 16,500 kilometres of railways into express roadways. A stretch of railway track is used less than 10% of the week and half the passing trains are almost empty, making 5% effective use.  Motorways are in use about 70% of the time. Railways, inflexible steel monsters slipping on steel tracks, are an inherently uneconomic form of Victorian transport and their exclusive, city-centre to city-centre monopoly should be opened up to lorries, buses and taxis – possibly as toll roads. Combining the vast rail and road budgets would save billions of Mr Brown’s pounds. Ask the rail operators if they wouldn’t rather own toll-roads accessible to all travellers.

 

 

Noel Hodson,

14 Brookside, OXFORD OX3 7PJ

Tel 01865 760994 fax 764520

 

noelhodson@btconnect.com