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dpack
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jema Downsizer Moderator
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Mistress Rose
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dpack
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Mistress Rose
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jema Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 28235 Location: escaped from Swindon
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 46218 Location: yes
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 46218 Location: yes
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Mistress Rose
Joined: 21 Jul 2011 Posts: 15972
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 46218 Location: yes
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 46218 Location: yes
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Posted: Fri Jul 30, 21 10:58 am Post subject: |
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a letter to the G
----------------------------------------------
Trains could be greenest solution to a sustainable transport network in Britain. Photograph: robert france/Alamy
Letters
Thu 29 Jul 2021 18.15 BST
Last modified on Thu 29 Jul 2021 18.27 BST
The experiment with electric lorries on the M180 (UK government backs scheme for motorway cables to power lorries, 27 July) is laughable when compared with the lack of interest shown by the government in furthering railway electrification at a time of an HGV driver shortage.
Just 8.5% of freight locomotives in the UK are electric. This lags lamentably behind mainland Europe, thanks in part to gaps as short as two miles in the electrified network. Aside from complete routes, there are merely 50 miles in total which, after electrification, could decarbonise over two million annual miles of freight haulage. Just 14 of these miles connect Britain’s busiest container port, Felixstowe, to the electrified network at Ipswich. The gaps exist thanks to electrified lines largely following radial passenger flows from London, whereas freight routes ignore these.
I held an HGV1 licence from 1974 to 2019 and can’t imagine how I’d ever overtake a slower electric lorry. And merge lanes to change routes only where the high-voltage wires are strung? That’s not going to happen. Any advisory jobs going at the Department for Transport?
Rob Harris
Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire |
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jema Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 28235 Location: escaped from Swindon
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 46218 Location: yes
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Mistress Rose
Joined: 21 Jul 2011 Posts: 15972
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Ty Gwyn
Joined: 22 Sep 2010 Posts: 4613 Location: Lampeter
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