BUILD ROADS NOT RAILS • I was interested to see
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the articles about congestion and the ideas dating back to 1929 for building roads over railways (CM 26 July-1 August).
However, the railways are very little used and British Rail's network is used to only 3% of its potential capacity available if converted into roads.
Bringing in London's commuters by express bus would require only half the land needed by rail.
The Victorians certainly built a wonderful network of transport routes; the great misfor tune was that they laid rails on them instead of surfacing the routes so that they could be used as roads.
In a few places excellent new roads have been built on railway tracks, but this needs to be done on a massive scale to overcome congestion.
This is quite possible, as can be seen from wartime airfield construction or the building of railways in the 1840s when 1,182 miles (1902km) of railway were opened to traffic in just one year — 1848.
A Watkinson, Harrogate, North Yorkshire.