Commute% bum
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I was very interested in Martin Watkins' article "Commuter buses out in the cold" (CM, February 11).
What interested me most was the two-and-a-half hour service between Kettering and St Pancras, London, at a return fare of £1.40, compared with the £6.70 ordinary return rail fare.
If Shelton-Osborn can do this on existing roads, much of which is antiquated all-purpose road, and the congested approach to central London and only part of the distance on motorways, then how much better their service could be in both speed and economy if the Midland railway was converted into a motorway from St Pancras to Kettering and the North.
As things stand, over £80 million of the unfortunate taxpayers' money is going to be thrown down the drain in a futile attempt to modernise and electrify the Midland railway from London to Bedford. This really is a classic example of the economics of the lunatic asylum.
In 1977 we have now reached the state on a national basis of spending only £338 million on road improvements and £370 million on rail passenger subsidies. So we will spend substantially more on wholly unproductive subsidies, to an expensive, clumsy and achaic mode of transport, than we will spend on productive investment on urgently needed new roads.
The £370 million subsidy is only part of what the Exchequer pays out to support the railways. The Midland line from St Pancras to the North would be an excellent line for conversion into a road as it runs adjacent to the M1 motorway at several points on its way north, and fly-over intersections could very easily be built so that M1 traffic could transfer to the Midland motorway and run into St Pancras Station, which could easily accommodate a long distance coach station, as well as giant car parks and warehouses for road transport.