THE biased analysis of David Spaven of the Rail Freight Group (Letters, October 17) to support the cause of rail cannot go unanswered.
The cause of accidents on the A9 is a serious public safety issue. From 2006 to 2010 there were 67 fatalities and 1200 injury-related accidents. Each accident is the subject of intensive forensic police examination with the road closed for prolonged periods of time while information is gathered. The analysis of this accumulated data needs to be published so that we can all learn from these tragedies.
Spending £2.5m on average-speed cameras is unlikely to have any effect. Heavy goods vehicles are restricted to 40mph on single-carriageway sections of the A9. On the same sections, cars can do 60mph. The likely cause of these accidents is frustrated motorists caught behind slow-moving lorries travelling at their legal speed of 40mph. The frustration leads them to overtake where they shouldn't and accidents result.
That lorries are the innocent victims in these accidents is not surprising. Where an accident has taken place, it is probable that both the car and lorry were within their legally-allowed speed limit. What effect will average-speed cameras have in preventing these accidents of frustration?
We need effective road and rail transportation in Scotland. The trial project Lifting the Spirit to move whisky from Speyside to Central Scotland should stand on its own merits. It doesn't need an emotional attack on road transport and an appeal to keep heavy goods vehicles in the slow lane to bolster the cause for rail. Road and rail have their proper place in an integrated Scottish transport system. The market place should dictate where road or rail offers the most effective service.
John Black,
6 Woodhollow House, Helensburgh.
I NOTE with interest the correspondence on Scotland's inadequate rail network (Letters, October 17). Travelling from Edinburgh to Inverness last Friday in the first class section I met a group of seven Yorkshire golfers en route to Dornoch who were dismayed at the inferior accommodation, with cramped, uncomfortable seating and limited space for luggage, but worse was to come when they discovered that lunch was not provided. I explained that they were now in Scotland, where the kind of service they had enjoyed on the East Coast line that very morning was not thought necessary.
Suburban carriages are just not acceptable on a journey of almost four hours, a length of time at least one hour longer than should be necessary. I travel every year on Swiss Rail where trains are comfortable, speedy and on time - this in a country with about the same population as Scotland and with challenging mountainous terrain.
Of course here we are too poor to afford decent railways, having had to subsidise London's rail network and in the future we will be expected to pay our share of HS2, a line which will bring no benefit to Scotland.
Neil MacGillivray,
Camuscross, Isle of Skye.
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