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"Topic by Janus" (CM August 4) headlined "Rodgers must do betterdraws the comment "Yes, Rodgers must do better." If transport is to serve and not dominate society, then society must control transport, and not the other way round, which is the prevailing situation.
Janus levels a great deal of criticism at the recent Labour Party report on transport policy but fails to justify his criticisms in any way other than the selfish pursuit of road transport issues (understandable though this selfish pursuit may be).
It would appear that Janus does not accept that there is a need to conserve energy when almost everyone else is beginning to accept that need, he does not accept that transfer of freight from road to rail will save energy when all except road transport interests do.
To prove this statement: if one uses Government figures it can be shown that an electrified rail system can move nearly all road freight using only that energy required to power half the nation's street lighting.
It would be too much to ask that this should happen, but it is good reason to believe the pursuit of a policy to transfer longdistance freight to rail would produce real energy savings with associated environmental gains.
A further benefit of this transfer of freight from road to rail would be to produce significant accident savings. So I would suggest that if Janus and Tony de Boer (whose association with Tarmac is perhaps less well known than his continual moaning that the Government does not spend more money on his company's products) were sincere in their calls to reduce accidents, as they would have us believe, they would be calling for the transfer of traffic from road to rail and not the building of more motorways.
For instance, building M40 as an all-purpose dualcarriageway instead of a motorway, Mr de Boer claims, will result in 100 extra accidents every year (an answer in Parliament has said the Government has no comparative figures so where has Mr de Boer got his from?).
A study I have seen has shown that not building M40 and transferring traffic to rail