The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) [1] welcomes today’s Rail White Paper. It begins to tackle the huge challenge of reinstating rail as a primary mode of transport for the benefit of town and countryside. But the Government should have gone further in backing rural rail services.

CPRE welcomes the Government’s proposal for a Strategic Freight Network to enhance the existing rail freight network.  But the test of Ministers’ commitment will be the number of local freight improvement schemes the Government supports. Applications are already lined up in the Transport Innovation Fund established to fund innovative regional and local transport schemes.

Meanwhile, we are extremely concerned that though promoting rail freight improvement, the Department for Transport is still considering whether to allow trials of ‘super trucks’, lorries nearly double the weight and length of the Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) which already thunder through the countryside [2].  These huge road vehicles could undermine the viability of rail freight and send mixed messages about Ministers’ commitment to rail.

CPRE regrets that the Government is not proposing to reopen any railway lines between now and 2014 [3] though we are glad it is not planning to close any regional or rural rail routes.  The Department for Transport also cautions that the ‘shape of the network may change in the longer-term’. This is a matter of concern given that the Government is not prepared to safeguard all disused lines over the next seven years [4]. 

Andrea Davies, senior campaigner at CPRE, commented: ‘Safeguarding disused lines is the best tactic in the face of the long-term uncertainty about demand for rail services which the White Paper invokes.  Relinquishing these assets would be the surest way of ensuring that demand simply does not take off for lack of options.

‘We urge the Government to scrap its proposals for super trucks and to reconsider its position on disused railway lines. Enhanced rural rail services could play a key role in ensuring sustainable rural communities and action on climate change’, Andrea Davies concluded.

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NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. We advocate positive solutions for the long-term future of the countryside. Founded in 1926, we have 60,000 supporters and a branch in every county. President: Bill Bryson. Patron: Her Majesty The Queen.

2. The Department for Transport completed a consultation on trials for super trucks earlier this year and will assess in September a further report evaluating whether to go ahead with the trials.

3. Delivering a Sustainable Railway (July 2007) states the “Government’s opposition to a blanket approach to safeguarding all potential alignments or disused lines” 7.23 p.74.

4. Transport 2000 compiled in April 2007 a list of 37 disused railway lines in England and Wales which could be re-opened to serve new development or to create strategic and interregional links.