Road or rail?
Sir: So British Rail are now trying to outbid the British Road Federation in their demands for a motorway network.
The British Rail advertisement (July 24) speaks in terms of 10,000 miles of motorways, when even the Federation has had a target of only 3,000 miles by 1980.
Among that 10,000 miles perhaps British Rail would be so kind as to include a new motorway from my home to my office — they certainly cannot manage it among their 10,000 miles of rail track.
The cheekiest of the claims in the advertisement is that rail can provide an alternative to roads. Britain's greatest satirist would Richard Marsh, scotched that one when he was Minister of Transport. He said: "Rail cannot now and never will take the place of road transport. The railways, particularly with the new freightliners, should be able to move freight more efficiently: but the idea sometimes expressed that rail can ever be an alternative to road on a massive scale, just does not stand up to examination." R. H. Phillipson Director, British Road Federation Ltd, 26 Manchester Square, London WI
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