One way to decarbonise

Philp Haigh ( Analysis, RAIL 887) rightly focuses his article on rolling stock performance, although the final two columns do address the wider issues.

But the interface between rail travel and other forms of transport is also a major cause of carbonderived energy loss, and solving this issue should be a priority when planning service improvements.

When I used the commuter rail service to Zushi from Yokohama, I was impressed with the way that buses lined up outside the station to meet every train from the big city, ready to whisk passengers to their suburban destinations.

And recently, while travelling from Dublin to Holyhead by ferry, I was struck by how the foot passengers were treated as a low priority for disembarkation, despite

the fact that most were heading en masse for Holyhead station for their onward journey.

The need to bring buses onboard to collect foot passengers seems to be at the root of the problem, along with the very generous allowance of time from the ferry’s scheduled arrival to the trains’ scheduled departures.

To reach Japanese levels of efficiency, it would be necessary to have the buses on board during the voyage and to load the departing foot passengers before the car occupants, as the major delays on leaving the ships are caused by queues backing up from the traffic lights (not a problem if you are first off and heading for the station).

It is a bit of a stretch to see the ferry operators sacrificing the space of a couple of buses, but they already do so for motorbikes, and it would have minimal impact on the disembarkation of cars.

With Holyhead Port possibly becoming a major ‘choke point’ in the event of new customs checks (especially if the customs border moves to the middle of the Irish Sea), there needs to be a radical rethink in order to achieve a modal shift from carbon-hungry air travel to sea + train.

John Edmondson, Holywell