Madam, - Kevin Myers's recent diatribe against railways is full of ridiculous nonsense (An Irishman's Diary, July 2nd). His proposal that railway tracks should be turned into bus lanes is beyond belief.
Apart from the enormous cost involved, why should we dispense with a reliable, fast, very comfortable and environmentally friendly means of travel for long journeys, in favour of a slower, cramped, fume-spewing system that would be affected by ice and snow to a far greater degree than the rail system?
He refers to the "hundreds of thousands of track-bearing acres" owned by CIE. Has he ever travelled by train and looked out the window for mile after mile at empty green fields, often weedy, with here and there a few sheep and now and again an odd cow in the distance? A tilled field is a rarity.
Yet at enormous expense, he would have the existing railways, embankments and cuttings removed in order to provide a bit more space for rabbits to play in.
He takes exception to the Sligo-Dublin line because of the difference in population between the two cities. He calls this line "insane", and implies that there are "empty trains on one leg of the journey". As a regular traveller on this line I can testify to the generous number of people travelling in both directions at different times of the day. Of course Mr Myers takes no account of the other 11 cities and towns that are served by this line. He ignores the benefit of the railway to the people served as it does not suit his argument.
His suggestion that the areas occupied by Dublin railway stations should be turned into development land is wrong. This could lead to more office blocks, more cars, more congestion in an already congested city. Instead the money should be spent on correcting the imbalance between the over-populated eastern side of the country and the under-developed beautiful western side which has traditionally been deprived of development funds.
Mr Myers believes that railways have been bypassed by the technology of the motor car and therefore should be abandoned. Newspapers have been bypassed by the technology of radio and TV, yet they retain their place in the communications industry. Perhaps if newspapers did disappear we would be spared the silly pronouncements of some columnists. - Yours, etc.,
BRENDAN MORRIS, St Joseph's Terrace, Sligo.