Letter: Better rail investment would reduce problems on the roads
The news report about road layouts in the Shropshire Star on March 17, was interesting.
Laterally thinking, the traffic could be vastly reduced if regions got the pro rata investment that London does.
Only about a fifth of the UK population live there but billions are spent on travel infrastructure; even if one assumes that a quarter of theUK population benefits from Crossrail, tube, suburban rail, there's still three-quarters of us who do not get similar investment which many areas need.
Shropshire, in particular, could benefit enormously from reopening old stations in the form of parkways or even parkways near to where stations used to be. Thus the five lines running into Shrewsbury are badly serving the public except the one from Crewe which does still have small stations, utilised occasionally but could be improved by upgrading to parkways and additions.
From Gobowen, two or three halts are needed between there and Shrewsbury; from Welshpool three; from Church Stretton two and a couple between Wellington and Shrewsbury.
Hereford, of course, suffers even worse than Shropshire with only four stations in the whole county. None west of that city, while in the north Woofferton's closure by Beeching was as daft an idea as it was possible to have. A parkway there would serve the expanding town of Tenbury Wells (on better roads) as well as the area towards Ludlow and west towards Powys.
All the five lines into Shrewsbury could have a viable busy Metro-type system running trains only from Welshpool via Shrewsbury to Gobowen, to Wellington and to Craven Arms – possibly to Whitchurch, too. (Note that the former line from Welshpool via Oswestry, a larger section of which still exists in private hands, to – Gobowen!)
One or two stations are needed to serve Shrewsbury's suburbs at Meole Brace and Harlescott. For example, they are newer areas than Marsh Barton in Exeter, a comparable city, where Marsh Barton is a huge out of town industrial area but has a poor bus service, or none at all, and was started 60 years ago. It has no station. A newer industrial area in Exeter, Sowton, does perversely have a station. Thus Harlescott and Meole Brace areas are obviously in need of one each.
R Ryall, Llandrindod Wells
