We’re still on wrong track

HERE we see the latest alleged plan to save the planet… lorries hooked up to power cables like trolleybuses. If the authors of this scheme actually follow their logic, they will eventually invent the railway train, the most brilliant plan for clean, green transport ever devised, yet in this country endlessly neglected and mismanaged where the lines have not actually been closed.

Here’s the point. Friction between a steel wheel and a steel rail is vastly less than that between a rubber tyre and a road surface. Electricity delivered by overhead cable is hugely more efficient and reliable than in an expensive heavy battery.

If anyone in government is seriously interested in the green faith they claim to follow, then a huge building plan for electrified railways, reopening all the ones we closed in the Sixties and more besides, would actually make more difference than any other policy.