Let’s turn motorways into railway tracks

I CAN remember a time when all goods were transported by train, and Bristol had several goods yards where all the goods were then delivered by lorry to local companies.

However, with the closure of local stations by Dr Beeching in the 1960s, it resulted in local factories being relocated to other parts of the country and the railway stations closing down.

The other problem is that there are too many tunnels for the trains to go through. There needs to be a new design of container which can be easily moved from a train to a lorry. For the majority of goods, that should not be too difficult.

The containers can then be easily transferred to smaller lorries for delivery to local companies.

I personally would like to see a rethink and an update of the movement of goods into cities, as it must be incredibly difficult for lorries to travel down our very narrow streets. No one likes to see a lorry blocking up the road, trying to deliver goods to companies on a busy street.

What we need to rethink is the way goods are packaged and transported in containers, so that they can be easily transferred from a large vehicle to a smaller one and then to a shop.

If the packages did not exceed a certain size, a smaller vehicle could be used to deliver goods from the outskirts of the city to the smaller shops in the centre of the city. This would considerably reduce carbon emissions and horrendous accidents on the motorways.

My personal solution would also include closing all motorways to road traffic and turning them into railway tracks and have all goods transported by using the American large engines, transporting containers double-stacked, as they do in America.

There would be no problem on the height of the goods, as there are no tunnels on motorways.

Mrs A Earl Bristol