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At some level of development (or at some level of NIMBYism, the way things are going) then rail and road must compete for the same landspace.

Does the picture change then? What if paving a railway twin track enabled 4 times the volume of passengers and goods to be carried in a day? (And I suspect the capacity improvement would be greater than that - we just couldn't afford to run the part empty trains to bring the capacity up).

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I don't think that's true. 100 years ago the figures were probably 90% rail and 10% road. If the demand for rail travel had grown at the same pace as the demand for road travel the ratios would have been approximately preserved - i.e. rail would have developed to meet the demand.

The fact is that road has been swamping out rail as a market choice very steadily and progressively. I don't see this trend stopping.

I certainly approve of offering choices of travel modes, but at the end of the day the market will make the choice for each journey.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I have a concern about leaving everything to 'market forces'. Inevitably people will make choices that are convenient for themselves, what do we do if that freedom starts to become destructive? At some point intervention might become necessary; this is not something folks are particulalry fond of - i.e. the Nanny State.
It is ironic that, when business and industry are striving to lean-up their organisation and make savings, they seem quite content to have their goods parked up in a lorry on the M6 or their executives similarly encumbered within a choked up traffic system. Content in the sense that they will continue to send goods and their representatives via this increasingly time consuming mode.
A fixation with the motor car tends to lead to its proponents viewing the issue through a one way mirror - if people want to travel by car then build them more roads they claim. Yet we may ultimately have to ignore this clamour and move forward to a transport system that does not rely on the motor vehicle as its prime modus operandi.
We've changed before, we can and will change again, the will currently does not exist.

If you're planning new development, then it shouldn't be a problem to make room for both - the landtake for transport is often greatly exaggerated by anti-road campaigners.


Capacity tends to be dictated by the capacity of junctions and interchanges rather than by the maximum free-flow level. Yes, by running buses at close headways you can move more people per hour on a two-lane road than on a two-track railway. But where do those buses, and the people who are on them, go at the end of their journey? If the buses stay within the boundaries of "railway land", then all you're doing is substituting one technology by another. If they leave "railway land", then they exacerbate existing road congestion problems.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I suspect rail never got anywhere near 50%, let alone 90%, as most short journeys would always have been done on foot, and many small towns and villages never had a rail service. I can only find statistics on the DfT website going back to 1952, but in that year rail had an 18% share of total passenger-kilometres:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 031610.pdf


In fact over the past 15 years the share of rail has remained roughly steady (1988 6.4%, 2003 6.2%) and in the past few years has actually grown (1997 was 5.7%).

Between 1993 and 2003, rail passenger/km grew by 32%, cars by 12%.

This underlines the point I was making that, while road is the most appropriate mode for the majority of journeys, there are some things that rail does better. I would say that the two have reached a rough equilibrium.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

The planning of transport networks (and land use planning in general) cannot be left entirely to market forces - it is something that is a legitimate function of government, although obviously government needs to take account of people's wants and needs. Without planning you end up with things like ribbon development which undermines the effectiveness of a road as a transport link.

Providing a transport system of optimal efficiency will also always involve a degree of cross-subsidising (just the same as with a postal system, telephony and electricity and gas supply)

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I was talking about the rail/road split - we'd properly exclude walking to make that particular comparison.



I'd say that there's a "natural" (i.e. market driven) drift towards road. Given that we have national pro-rail, anti-road policies, I'm not surprised that the drift has been reduced and in some cases reversed. But I'm pretty clear in my own mind that rail continues to naturally decline, and is only supported by increasingly wild policy interventions.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I agree, but I believe that planning controls should only be applied with a light facilitating touch, not a heavy ideological one.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Every approach to anything has an underlying ideology, even if it's one of non-intervention.
I repeat my point from above, market forces cannot be permitted to dictate policy to the extent that damage to or destruction of resources or the environment occurs. People tend to make choices that are convenient for themsleves without considering the impact at a system-wide level. It's human nature, but it shouldn't ultimately determine how we allocate resources or use up our land.
For example, demand for natural peat remains high even though peat bogs are disappearing (up to 94% have been used up apparently). This is not healthy and intervention may be required to protect them. Likewise, man has hunted certain animal species to near extinction and cut down swathes of rain forest in the name of market forces.
Similarly, if tobacco were discovered today and the effects on our health discovered tomorrow, it would be banned by the weekend.
Allowing market forces to dictate the flow of things is pretty much a 'today' idea, a product of the global economy. That doesn't mean its a phenomenon that cannot be changed or overridden if the need arises.

... In which case howcome people are crying out to legalise cannabis and the like for recreational use? <note I *approve* for medicinal use>

Slight misunderstanding here, I think.

When I said "heavy ideological", I was really thinking about planning policy driven by personal or politically correct points of view, and especially points of view clearly at odds with public choice. Anti-car policies would fall into this category.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Other quotes:

•Inter-city routes. Rail is highly efficient over medium-to-long distances. Beyond 200 miles, air travel starts to gain an advantage....

•Commuter lines. Heavy usage at peak periods and light usage at other times makes it hard for commuter railways to make money......

•Branch lines. These are the least efficient bit of the railways, and thus the most promising target for cuts.

Although it is a small country, Britain has the second largest rail network in Europe.



Two-thirds of all government subsidy—£855m in 2000-01—is spent on under-used regional networks which earn less than a fifth of the system's revenue. So large are the losses on the scenic 82-mile Inverness to the Kyle of Lochalsh line that according to local lore, it would probably be cheaper to provide each of its passengers with a chauffeur-driven limousine.




Other quotes:

BR, is responsible for just 6pc of all passenger journeys. Yet, even on the official numbers, the railways will take almost 24pc of the £140 billion of taxpayer's fuel in the 10-Year Transport Plan.

Notwork Rail is guzzling £1.5 billion a year more than its budget, equivalent to more than half a penny on income tax........

.......The railways will cost £9 billion this financial year, but passenger and freight income will be just £5 billion.......

..........for every mile a passenger travels, the taxpayer chips in an average 16.5p.

Taking money out of the roads budget to pay for the railways would be economic madness

the old mantra that the railways bring "social benefits" or are less environmentally damaging will not wash



More quotes:

90% of dedicated track [I think they mean motorways and railroads] for its 8% of passenger mileage. Much of this subsidy could be better used to ease the cost burden to road users

From the environmental standpoint, rail is extremely energy intensive, absorbing more than five times that needed for road travel, per passenger mile or ton mile

Investment in rail provision is correspondingly more costly than road




For those too busy to follow the links


I'm sure there's bound to be plenty more of the same in:

http://www.transwatch.co.uk/road-rail-comparisons.htm[/quote][/img]


Don't forget what the man said:

you or I cannot find any published information on the benefits of investing in the railways

All you usually have to go is marketing hype from those with a vested interest.


Think about it:

Rail is heavily subsidised (no or minimal - remind me which it is - fuel duty and loadsa cash subsidy).

Road is heavily taxed.

Where does most traffic go?

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

All things being equal, the economy remaining stable and resoures remaining available I agree.
I think we must also accept that there may come a time, impossible though it may be to envisage in these comfortable times, when a government with a view of some bigger picture is forced to ovveride public will.

I'm sure there is... Having just visited the site for the first time, the opening page gave me the slight impression that it wasn't going to be a pro-rail site, and further browsing through the site sections only served to reinforce this opinion. I'm sure there's some good ideas there and some genuinely sound arguments, but I find it difficult to take seriously when they're mixed in with comments which seem to be straight from the anti-rail protesters handbook.

There's a letter from Paul Withrington in today's "Times":

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 73,00.html

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Rural trains
From Mr Paul F. Withrington

Sir, At last there appears to be a glimmer of sanity in the Government’s transport policies, at least with regard to rural rail. Alistair Darling has said the Government is not “in the business of carting fresh air around the countryside” and Ben Webster reports (December 17) that the Government will in future be able to take account of the wider interest of public transport users, including assessments as to whether buses could provide a more frequent and less subsidised service than the trains.

However, with rural railways often offering the equivalent of one nearly empty bus once an hour, it is not the fresh air that is the problem. It is the waste of a right of way that is often wide enough for a 24ft carriageway capable of carrying thousands of vehicles per day. If paved, such routes would remove countless lorries from unsuitable rural roads while enabling coaches to replace trains, now costing the taxpayer £300 million per year on 60 branch lines.

Yours faithfully,
PAUL F. WITHRINGTON
(Director),
Transport-watch,
12 Redland Drive,
Northampton NN2 8QE.
December 17.

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A swift comment might be that on the corridors where rural passenger trains are running with few passengers, the parallel roads aren't congested either, so turning the lines into low-quality single carriageway roads would simply be a waste of money.

Properly targeted expenditure on bypasses and upgrading existing roads is likely to be much more cost-effective.

Paul -> any chance of splitting this topic so that "Rail-Road Conversion" has its own topic within "General Chat"?

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

By "opening page" do you mean the page opened from the link which starts:

Road/rail comparisons - Summary findings

Very much against public and political sentiment roads managed to avoid congestion would offer 3 to 4 times the capacity to move freight and people at one quarter the cost of rail while using 30% to 40% less energy and reducing casualty costs suffered by rail passengers by a factor of 2.

The problem with the proposition is that (a) it is so very much against expectation (b) the numbers are so overwhelming as to inspire disbelief rather than belief (c) few people have ever seen a motor road managed to avoid congestion - the UK road network is (with the exception of motorways and some modern single carriageways) a collection of access roads never designed for motor traffic (d) rail is so romantic.

The primary proposition is expanded below. Nearly all the statements were tested at the Public Inquiry into the West Coast Main Line Modernisation Programme. There, Railtrack's immensely expensive Inquiry Team could do nothing in the face of the research presented. Any person who doubts that may have copies of the relevant closing statements in PDF Format. Additionally, the whole is supported by a series of facts sheets also available in PDF format, list appended.



What type of comments are you refering to?

Or do you mean that the comments ranged from "balanced" to "anti-rail"?

If the writer finds nothing pro-rail to write about (or even that he wants to write about) does that invalidate all his anti-rail findings?

Could you give an example of a "balanced" web site that has no "anti" comments whatsoever, and an even "balance" of pro comments?

Any bets that it won't contain Transport 2000, the rail "users" website, or any government, local authority or any privately owned/for profit "public" transport body websites?

Would you even begin to consider writing:

"I'm sure there's some good ideas on the Oxfam/NSPCC website and some genuinely sound arguments, but I find it difficult to take seriously when they're mixed in with [some] comments which seem to be straight from the anti-poverty/child cruelty protesters handbook"?

Would you expect a website on, for example, say, the Black Death to have no anti-Black Death comments and be "balanced"?

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

Do you think railways are the moral equivalent of the Black Death, then?

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Ah, but don't most roads go slap bang through the very hearts of rural communities?

Whilst most stations are outside of them, meaning that the rail road "bypasses" (to coin a phrase) the heart, if not the whole "urban" area?

And whilst the rural lines might link rural communities, don't they link them to major urban centres, and so actually link major urban centres, providing nice level routes with wide sweeping gentle bends, between them.

Bit like the road system the country lacks then. So what's so "low quality" about that?

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk

Er, by definition, if a railway line connects major urban centres it isn't a rural line, just as the M6 isn't a rural road.

I don't think they're talking about things like the West Coast Main Line between Preston and Glasgow. Perhaps you are.


A single-carriageway road of under 24 feet carriageway width, even less through bridges and tunnels (possibly with alternate single-way working) is a low-quality road.

Would you like to provide an example of the kind of rural railway you think could usefully be converted into a road?

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Cunning side step of the issues raised!

Is that what they call a "straw man"?

Does the Black Death have a morality (I agree that the "railways" can)?

If anything, I was alluding to the morality of the arguments.

In what way does your question develop that point?

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http://www.itsyourduty.org.uk