Railways into Roads J N his Commentary of January II Janus gave one of
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the best appreciations of what lies behind the campaign of the Railway Conversion League that has so far appeared in the Press. He highlighted the essential fact that transport routes are a commodity upon which the whole economic future of the country and, more emphatically and immediately, the future of the areas of high unemployment depends.
The League, as Janus points out, thinks in terms of the ultimate conversion of the greater part (all that is suitable) of the railway system to a network of segregated motor roads. This may appear utopian or impracticable at first sight, but it rests on the fact that, unless the historic processes of technological advance and consequent obsolescence miraculously by-pass the railways, there will come a time when the railway route network will no longer carry trains. Perhaps we in the League may see this as happening sooner than is envisaged by most people, but the question of when it will happen does not affect the principle .that such a development is apparently inevitable in due course. By the time railways finally disappear one of two things will have happened: (a) Our road system will have become inundated by the increasing flood of vehicles and internal transport will virtually have broken down, with disastrous economic results, or (b) we shall prudently have preserved and converted the countrywide railway route network, as it became progressively redundant for railway use, to a system of segregated motor roads, thus providing ample accommodation, for the safe and free movement of motor traffic up to and beyond the ultimate limit of vehicle population which is now envisaged.
M. J. DouGtAss, Hon. Co-ordinator of the Railway Conversion League.