Let’s get on the right track before roads become largely redundant

THE Government’s Transport 21 plan should be given credit for reversing the destruction of the railways, but you publish comments from Prof Seán Barrett’s ERSI paper unjustifiably attacking investment in rail (Irish Examiner, December 21).

He says “bus services were invariably cheaper and more frequent than railways”.

But railways can operate at frequencies of more than one train per minute and the main reason they are more expensive to operate than buses is that the infrastructure (track, signalling, etc) and overheads (policing, accidents, maintenance, etc) must be underwritten by the rail operator while it is provided free of charge to the bus operator.