Recently posted as a comment on a VERY influential railwayman's blogsite by an S&D supporter (unfortunately not me!) -
Now is the time to reverse the Beeching\Marples closures .....
With the credit crunch well underway and the oil dependent Western countries facing depression now is the time to invest in a sustainable transport system for the good of the whole country, and by that I mean railways.
We had them once, and although the talk today is of having an integrated transport system, the closest we ever got to that was under the Big Four, and the wartime railway executive. British Railways lost out under the British Transport Commission, losing its road based and ancillary services and then, ever since Earnest Marples became Transport Minister in 1959 we have been a road obsessed country. Our railway network was slowly destroyed, and now all those years later we are all truly paying the cost for that era. As demand increases for rail services, and the network appearing to be at breaking point, now is the time to finally accept that much of the Beeching\Marples was a mistake, and therefore these old line formations need protecting, ready for reinstatement. It may seem a bit late to some people, but the longer this option is left, the more the cost will be in the future, because oil isn't going to last for ever, and we can't grow enough bio fuels to replace it. Oil may seem cheap once again after this summer’s excess, but as soon as the world recovers from the recession upwards the price will go. The country needs to have something to work for, and rebuilding them now makes sense, and alongside these railways we should lay the fibre optic cables for super fast internet connections, and we could have two sustainable transport systems for the future.
Or we could just sit in our cars on the motorway, more than likely, full of rage!
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