Speedy service

Mike Twaddle’s letter (26 September), noted that China has built a bridge connecting Hong Kong to the mainland which will be used by trains travelling at 200km per hour.

“Read this and weep, British rail companies” he writes.

200km is equivalent to 124 miles. British trains have been running at 125mph, both under state and under private operators, since the late 1970s. Our rail system does have problems, yes; but it also has many successes.

Let’s not get too carried away with our criticism, concentrating only on the problems and ignoring the parts that are working well.

PB KINNEAR Dundee Road, Meigle, Perthshire

Campaigners are pushing for the expansion of the 20mph urban speed limits, (your report, 25 September).

The claim is that this will cut accidents and save on health care. However, accidents have

actually risen slightly in areas where a lower limit has been applied, though usually not enforced. It may well be that the continual need to check the local speed limit lowers driving quality. One also

wonders if they have factored the loss of productivity into their calculations.

But these are small issues. Consider. Driving at 20mph rather than 30mph means that you stay in a given area 50 per cent longer, or to put it another way, a ten-minute journey becomes a 15-minute one, meaning 50 per cent more pollution, possibly more than that, due to slow driving in lower gears, which is not most motorists’ strength. The human and financial costs of cardiac and respiratory diseases, caused by increased pollution, dwarfs those of road injuries into insignificance.

Before permitting local authorities to indulge in what in most cases is virtue signalling, central government should commission a scientific investigation into the proposal’s effect on air pollution.

These are already at illegal levels in parts of our cities. It would be negligence bordering on immorality not to do so given the potential risks to the health of our communities.

DAVID HOGG Glanville Place, Edinburgh