Sir, I think your report about potential rail expansion (“Network Rail forecasts overcrowded trains, longer journeys and no new lines”, June 24) rather missed the point. Network Rail has announced the most thorough and wideranging strategic review of the potential need for new rail lines this country has ever seen. It is a mammoth piece of work that will take 12 months to complete and will involve many experts. The railways have achieved great success in recent years with train punctuality at a record high — now more than 90 per cent on time, record levels of safety and huge growth in passengers and freight.

The Government appreciates the massive benefits that rail brings to our economy and to reducing the UK’s carbon footprint and has maintained high levels of investment, enabling us to repair most of the damage done by decades of underinvestment. These high levels of investment are set to continue for at least six years as we double our investment in schemes designed to expand the railway and relieve overcrowding.

As well as doing our day job better, and delivering hundreds of projects to build a bigger, better railway, we must look to the long-term needs and transport solutions for our country. We believe new rail lines, be they high speed or not, will play a central and pivotal role.

Iain Coucher
Chief executive, Network Rail

Sir, While it is heartening to hear that someone is at least beginning to think about building new high-speed rail lines and expanding the existing capacity in the UK, who in their right mind would want to believe that Network Rail was the right organisation to be entrusted with the task of building them and running them? What it has at the moment is beyond its capability to manage and run efficiently, as any frequent rail traveller will testify.

Edward Libbey
Starston, Norfolk

Sir, One sentence of your report on rail capacity goes to the heart of the problem: “The Rail Regulator, who was under pressure from the Government to reduce spending, ordered Network Rail to abandon 20 schemes to ease overcrowding, which would have cost £365 million.”

Relatively low-cost schemes like that are far more cost-effective and less environmentally damaging than spending billions on high-speed lines or on road projects. We can contrast the £365 million for the whole of the UK with the £944 million that the Government is about to spend on a single 20-mile improvement to a trunk road in Cambridgeshire. The opposition parties need to force a restructuring of the rail industry so that a high level of long-term investment is ensured from both public and private sources.

John Henderson
Huntingdon, Cambs

Sir, Where we can build a railway, we can build a road. A recent report for the rail industry establishes that building new motorways provides capacity at a quarter of the cost of new railways. The environmental impact of construction is likely to be in the same ratio and rail industry figures show that a railway powered by coal-generated electricity has worse climate change impact than road.

James Russell
Fowey, Cornwall

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