Deutche Bahn in the UK

Didnt BREL (British Rail Engineering LTD) go to a Management/worker buyout?.
Most peoples idea of a free market is a market where the rules suit them, or their ideals. There are no true free markets, some of the seemingly free markets are mired in regulations other than monetary.
The private car is the symbol of the Free market, yet it is probably the most subsidised mode of transport worldwide. The costs to society are enormous , though the private car has many benefits too , and those of us in rural areas could not live without them .

David Benton wrote:The private car is the symbol of the Free market, yet it is probably the most subsidised mode of transport worldwide. The costs to society are enormous

And that is what was not taken into account in the euphoria of road transport expansion in the fifties and sixties. The scale of the environmental and health costs, and issues such as traffic congestion, could not even be imagined in those days.

David Benton wrote:the private car has many benefits too , and those of us in rural areas could not live without them.

Definitely. We are building our new house in the Kenyan bush, and without a big 4WD diesel-guzzling car we would be lost. Even in developed countries, it should not be either/or but both/and. Hub and spoke distribution systems, for example, with rail doing the long distance movement of goods and road the short distance deliveries, makes a lot of sense. Cars are needed in rural areas, but in UK cities such as London and Brighton quite a few of my friends gave up their cars years ago and now rely on public transport. If they find they ever need a car for a specific occasion, they take a taxi or hire a car, both of which work out a lot cheaper than owning their own. Those who do still own cars rarely use them.

johnthefireman wrote:
It can be (and is) also argued that humans (not just men)

What kind of humans are there besides men, in the sense of all men or mankind? Something new?

johnthefireman wrote:
the euphoria of road transport expansion in the fifties and sixties. The scale of the environmental and health costs, and issues such as traffic congestion

The imaginary environmental and health costs. In a free country, the remedy for traffic congestion is more roads, not restricting people's right to own cars. Away from cities, public transportation can not supply everyone's needs.

Er, where exactly are we supposed to build new roads in small overcrowded countries like UK or Netherlands, and in ancient cities such as London? Note that I have already conceded that in rural areas cars are necessary, including in my own case.

Health costs are not imaginary. Surely you must be aware of the smogs even in some of your own US cities? The effect on people's respiratory systems? The health problems caused by such things as leaded petrol and particles in diesel? It's even worse in cities in developing countries which have reached the 21st century largely without railways (or with very limited rail networks which served colonial needs but not the needs of a modern economy).

In the cities in developed nations, people are voting with their feet (literally!) and using trains, metros, trams, buses and bikes, while pedestrian-only areas are increasing. For long-distance travel many people have also abandoned private vehicles and go by air, another very inefficient and environmentally-unfriendly form of transport. Modern nations should have good commuter networks for cities, good regional railway links between cities, and good high speed rail networks to challenge short- to medium-length flights. There should be virtually no long-distance heavy lorries on our European roads, as that cargo should largely go by rail, and we should be seeing only light to medium lorries making short-distance deliveries from rail depots to final destinations. Rural people will still use cars to get about, at least as far as the next major town well-served by public transport.

Last time I looked at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it did not include the right to own a car.

johnthefireman wrote:There should be virtually no long-distance heavy lorries on our European roads, as that cargo should largely go by rail, and we should be seeing only light to medium lorries making short-distance deliveries from rail depots to final destinations. Rural people will still use cars to get about, at least as far as the next major town well-served by public transport.

Last time I looked at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it did not include the right to own a car.

I don't know about Europe, but on my own continent the idea of no long-distance heavy lorries on the road is pure fantasy, which doesn't mean that some trailers aren't carried in freight trains..
I don't know what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is, but living in a more or less free country, I don't need it.

Congratulations on your new house, John. I hope that it's near a rail line.

johnthefireman wrote:
Health costs are not imaginary. Surely you must be aware of the smogs even in some of your own US cities? The effect on people's respiratory systems? The health problems caused by such things as leaded petrol and particles in diesel? It's even worse in cities in developing countries which have reached the 21st century largely without railways (or with very limited rail networks which served colonial needs but not the needs of a modern economy).

In the 1950s I worked for two years as a laboratory assistant in the London Chest Hospital. I learned a good deal about the effects of smoke on people's health. General awareness of that was one of the influences towards eliminating coal smoke - not just from trains. For example I used to see patients whose lungs were seriously affected by the smoke. In cities in Britain at least that is one contaminant people no longer have to be affected by. But road transport now produces other contaminants. Petrol and diesel driven vehicles need to be tackled too. My experience there is one of the reasons I am so hostile to coal powered locomotion. They are not just intriguing remnants of the past; they are very serious health hazards.

Later, in the 1970s, I was again made aware of the bad effects of coal smoke. I was travelling in South Africa near the Swaziland border. I stayed the night in a town where there was a large locomotive depot and experienced again the bad effects of coal smoke. (The apartheid government knew that they had no oil and felt it necessary to be prepared to face a cut off of supply, so relied on the coal which they had plenty of, even using it to make artificial oil for vehicles.) Coal smoke was a nasty feature of South Africa. But most of it affected African townships.

An informative article about rail freight in thenUK, from Wiki. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_fr ... at_Britain" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

philipmartin wrote:I don't know about Europe, but on my own continent the idea of no long-distance heavy lorries on the road is pure fantasy, which doesn't mean that some trailers aren't carried in freight trains..

Of course it's not going to happen, even in Europe. The road industry is too heavily subsidised and has too many vested interests. But it is still a vision worth working towards.

philipmartin wrote:I don't know what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is

Text of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Wikipedia)

Your country voted for it in 1948.

philipmartin wrote:living in a more or less free country, I don't need it.

Whether or not you need it is a moot point - it basically guarantees the same freedoms that your US Constitution does, apart from the right to own deadly weapons (and cars!) - but given that the US is the most powerful nation in the world with a track record of intervening in other people's countries, others certainly need it in relation to your free country.

philipmartin wrote:Congratulations on your new house, John. I hope that it's near a rail line.

I've just seen the map of the proposed route of the new Standard Gauge railway line west of Nairobi, and it seems it won't be too far from us, but not within sight nor earshot, unfortunately.

johnthefireman wrote:

philipmartin wrote: I don't know what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is.

Your country voted for it in 1948.

Thank you, John. I Wiki'd it after posting that I didn't know what that Universal Declaration (well, I declare.) was, and saw Eleanor Roosevelt's photo there and the representative of the USSR, among others; not the world's finest people.

Perhaps it's just as well that you will be out of earshot of the new railway when it's built, unless Jane is a rail fan too.

george matthews wrote:
In the 1950s I worked for two years as a laboratory assistant in the London Chest Hospital. I learned a good deal about the effects of smoke on people's health.

Below are two photos of the Delaware Lackawanna & Western railroad in Scranton Pennsylvania in 1900, from Shorpy.com. Like all Shorpy photographs, they are excellent. They illustrate the air quality there. It's easy to see how people working there would get the "Pittsburg lung."
Scranton'a air quality is better these days.

You must realise the very serious health effects during the period when coal was dominant. It's a very important development in improving human health since coal was restricted.

I did see and test the lungs of many people in east London who were damaged by the coal smoke which was present in the air in the 1950s

We are now aware that it is not just human personal health which was seriously affected by burning coal, but the planetary health has been affected by changing the climate. The effect of raising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is having serious effects and has to be tackled by phasing out the burning of coal. Leave it in the ground. As soon as possible we need to increase the proportion of energy derived from solar and biological means. I have contributed towards that aim by developing biogas - which has huge possibilities in providing energy that does not increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.