The IEA publication “Paving over the Tracks” highlights the opportunity lost by preserving the railway as a railway. The background analysis supporting that is here. The critics, mostly from the railway lobby, illustrate the scandal that the railways have been for over half a century. Here are the facts, none of which are our fault.

• A double track railway offers 7.3 metres between tunnel and viaduct walls, the same width as the carriageway of a two-way trunk road, and 8.5 metres elsewhere. It is not our fault that roads built on such railway alignments would be vastly superior to the tarmacked cow trails which so often double as A-roads in the UK. Likewise it is not our fault that the widths are vast on the approaches to towns and cities. Despite that the railway lobby persist in the notion that the rights of way are “too narrow”. In the 1960s a Permanent Under-Secretary told his Minister that it was “impossible” to make a road from a railway because it was , “too straight and too level”, for heaven’s sake.

• A contra-flow express coach lane in New York 11 feet wide offers 30,000 seats in the peak hour whilst the trains carrying 30,000 crushed passengers into Victoria Main line require four inbound tracks. Despite that Bombardier scandalously told the Transport Committee’s inquiry into the Future of the Railway, 2003-2004 that, “to carry 50,000 people per hour in one direction we need: a 175 metre road used by cars, or a 35 metre road used by buses or a 9 metre bed for a metro or commuter railway”. Likewise Professor Begg, DfT Staff and others are prepared to mislead Ministers and the Secretary of State by saying that HS2 will have the same capacity as a 12-lane motorway when, in fact, one lane of such a road may, if dedicated to express coaches, have four times the seating capacity of HS2.

• It is not our fault that, if London’s vast grade- separated rail network were paved, all those crushed peak-hour surface rail commuters would find seats in express coaches sufficient to fill only one seventh of the capacity available at a fraction the fare, nor is it our fault that, averaged over the network, Rail carries half as much per track-km as does the strategic road system per lane-km.

• The plain fact is that the rail function could be discharged by a daily flow as low as 450 express coaches plus lorries per day per track, averaged over the network, a flow so low it would be imperceptible in one lane of a motor road. Yet this vast clunking network serves the hearts of our towns and cities.

• Dividing costs to Government by passenger-miles or tonne-miles provides unit costs by rail which are five to seven times higher than the comparable costs by road.

• And. Oh gosh! the replacement Express coaches and lorries would use 30% less energy than the trains, while emitting less carbon. Furthermore there would be an immense additional saving in fuel and emissions from the tens of thousands of other vehicles which could divert from the unsuitable roads and city streets which they now clog. Nevertheless the Railway lobby, in defiance of the facts, persists in presenting Rail as though it were uniquely “green”.

• Amazingly the arithmetic shows that when deaths by rail, including trespassers but not suicides, are divided by passenger-miles, the death rate is higher than the corresponding value for the strategic road network. Meanwhile the railway lobby exaggerates in favour of rail by a factor of around 400 by citing statistics which ignore usage and which confine rail deaths to those killed as passengers in Train Accidents, deaths which amount to less than 5% of all those killed on the network.

• A sensible budget for converting the national rail system to a system of reserved motor roads is £20bn – a mere peanut compared with the anticipated expenditure on national rail for the decade to 2018/19, namely, £89bn including finance charges or £76bn excluding those charges. Till income for the decade is only circa £24bn (thats the income to Netwrk Rail, not the fares income to the TOCs). Hence the implied subsidy is £65bn (where the data excludes Cross rail and HS2).

• In comparison to that vast expenditure on rail, perhaps £30bn will be spent on the strategic road network over the decade but the tax take may exceed £170bn.

In short, rail commuters travelling in crushed conditions to London terminals on week-day mornings will be dismayed to know that, if the railways were not a kind of religion, they would all be seated and at a fraction of the cost of the train; that in Central London and in the peak hour, our immense, clunking rail network is, in highway terms, used to perhaps one seventh of its capacity if paved; that even in tunnels a double-track railway offers a right of way the same width as the carriageway of a two-way trunk road; that if the rails were removed in favour of asphalt, productivity would increase by a factor of two to three; that the replacement express coaches would match the train for journey times (except for the longest 10% of journeys); that subsidy would be turned to profit; that countless lorries and other vehicles would divert from the unsuitable rural roads and city streets which they now clog; that energy consumption and emissions would be reduced; that deaths would be reduced and that endless acres of derelict railway land would become intensely valuable.

The reason for this scandalous state of affairs is that the railway lobby, and all those train spotters, have indeed succeeded in elevating rail to a kind of religion, failing only because of man’s failure and quite beyond reason.

Truth is that the system passed its sell-by date in 1945. Consequently we now have a fully modernised transport museum pretending to be a transport system at great inconvenience and cost to rail commuters and to the nation as a whole.

From our archive at item 25, in topic 6, we have Frances Cairncross, when Economics Correspondent for The Guardian, cited as writing, on 29 April 1974 that, “when trains are still the theme of nursery rhymes and children’s stories, it is small wonder that the railways have a romantic fascination for most adults. Only years of nursery conditioning can explain the calm with which the public has accepted a bill of £3,000 millions (£37bn at 2014 prices) to subsidise British Rail over the last decade …”. The pity is that it is the same today but with one difference namely, subsidy for decades to 2018/19 is likely to be £65bn, not counting Crossrail and HS2. So, real progress there then.