Age of the closure?

Scan page 8

"BRITAIN should prepare to live without a railway. Or at least without one run on ASLEF lines.

Probably the Tories are not quite ready yet to follow this chilling advice from the Economist magazine. But they are prepared to accelerate the rundown of the railway system begun under previous governments, Tory and Labour.

In 1962 Britain had 17,500 miles of railway. Today it has about 11,000. According to BR figures, another 3,000 miles will become unusable in the next ten years if present levels of investment continue.

The current level of government subsidy to BR29% - is much less than for other rail systems in Europe. BR's stock of carriages, wagons, and trains is increasingly aged.

From the point of view of transport as a public service, rail has many advantages. It is cleaner than read transport. It is safer. The deaths: per ton-mile. for freight are about 15 times higher by road than if transferred to rail; deaths per passenger mile are about four times higher by bus, and eight times higher by car, than if transferred to ¡All overheads and sideeffects taken into account, rail transport is also; probably, cheaper than road transport. And a general shift to rail would make the remaining road travel less congested, therefore quicker and cleaner.

But more profits are made from road transport, one way or another, than from rail. Profits rank higher with capitalist governments than social need. Moreover, trade unionism in road transport - where there are thousands of small operators - is more casily subdued than in rail.

In the US, where the profiteers of road transport rule supreme, public transport hardly exists at all many large cities. The drift of dory policy, on London I ransport and / on British Rail, is in the same direction. Not only ASLEF members, but all working people have an interest in resisting it.