A
new book answers Transwatch claims
Reliable
facts expose the impracticability of railway conversion
19 July 2007
In 1953, Brig. Lloyd initiated the conversion idea
& said that rail passengers would all transfer to untimetabled buses. 3400
buses would give a bus at every station, to be boarded without waiting. BR had
5600 stations! Displaced
Lloyd’s costs were based on a 1954 plan -
‘having wide support’ - by Sir David Robertson MP to convert the
161 mile Inverness-Wick line to an all-weather motorway. There was total
opposition to closure when it was proposed - not least by Robertson in
Parliament! There was no call at any other Public Hearings into closures, for
conversion. These included the 174 mile M&GN, 125 mile GC, 100 mile
S&D, 98 mile Waverley line & 71 mile H&B. There were hundreds of
closures. Doubtless, they feared ridicule or worse.
Significantly, road hauliers & bus operators have
not supported conversion. If they did, it would be in the hope that all
motorists would desert the motorways!
Claims that safety on the new roads would be better
than on railways are flawed. Lloyd ignored recent years of good rail safety to
compare current road safety with
BR’s worst year ever - two years earlier (although current data was
publicly available)! His disciples claim that deaths of pedestrians, cyclists
or motor-cyclists can be ignored as they do not go near railways! Users of
level crossings, footpaths, etc are ignored! They claim deaths of trespassers
(aka pedestrians!) be added to rail passenger deaths, but do not add uninjured
trespassers to total rail user! The problem was to be avoided on converted
roads by uncosted frequent fast motor patrols!
Conversionists claim width & bridge
clearance are adequate for roads. The only named
line studied, specified alteration of over half of its bridges, purchase of
adjoining private property at 13 places & would abandon 26 miles of railway
- which had 53 bridges & 5 level crossings on a route mostly on embankments
or in cuttings! Buses on tight round trip times would divert to existing roads
to bypass the abandoned section, without conceding that must cause delay and extra deaths! Many bridges were not measured.
Changeover plans were mostly vague. One allocated 9
days for a 160 mile line. It could not be done at all with the planned bus
fleet, as simple details were overlooked.
Transwatch says that most people are ‘open to
reason’ on conversion. The reality is that 50 years of propaganda has not
convinced them, MPs nor road biased Ministers - including one who was a Partner
in a road building firm! The Directory of British Associations lists peak
railway conversion league/campaign membership as 75, before it fell to 26, then
zero!
Conversionists publish lists of closed lines
converted. They include 109 yard lengths, routes widened from 12 to 102 feet,
or crossed at a tangent or ‘unclear if road widened onto railway’,
or just ‘very close’! Of over 10,000 miles closed, about 250 has been
converted using a loose definition of the word conversion. Some were widened by
a factor of 8.
Extracts of the views of ‘experts’
(non-transport professionals) are
quoted to promote conversion. Unhelpful comments are replaced by ellipses!
Opponents’ views in the same issues are ignored!
Conversionists used comparisons which would be jeered
at a public meeting. They ignore the length of roads, without which there would
be no traffic, to ‘compare’ only motorways & trunk roads with
railway length, whilst claiming that deaths will fall on the very roads which
they ignore!
Conversionists claim that bus & haulage services
are unsubsidised, & relate road taxes to expenditure on roads. Consultants
have proved that road haulage does not pay its full share of capital,
maintenance & accident costs, and no national study has been made of bus
costs. Taxpayers & motorists subsidise road operators. Without railways,
road drivers’ hours would fall like a stone, wages would soar, vehicle
safety devices would be enforced backed by meaningful checks on vehicles &
drivers, with realistic fines or prison sentences. They could not remain in
business, if these conditions applied now.
Attempts to compare rail & road fuel consumption
are based on ‘comparing’ one hypothetical
lorry - fully loaded by weight - with
an average for all freight trains.
They are unaware that thousands of lorries are fully loaded by cubic capacity - well below weight
capacity, and thousands more have part loads. Independent studies show that road haulage consumes 5 times as much
fuel per tonne-km as rail. Eddie Stobart’s web page shows that
transferring some traffic to rail gives massive fuel savings.
Forecast huge fare reductions
on replacement buses are proved - on conversionist figures - to be unreal.
E.A. Gibbins, author,
‘Railway conversion - the impractical dream’
2007