Pan Up
New report forgets what railways are for. Want the wrong answer? Ask the wrong person
The report by John Varley OBE TD into lineside vegetation management is the worst report into anything to do with railways I have read in a long time. Laughable, ridiculous, even plain stupid doesn’t cover it. Over-reacting? Me?
Let’s start with the headline on the Department for Transport website: ‘Balance between Safety and Conservation at the heart of tree review’.
Not convinced? OK, try this: ‘Vegetation considered to be the poor relation and not treated as an asset in the same way as track and signalling’. What? WHAT?
No. I’m not making this up. Apparently Network Rail is not there to facilitate the running of trains any more, but to enhance the biodiversity of the planet.
The report title is ‘Valuing nature – a railway for people and wildlife’. You and I paid for this.
CO-CONSPIRATORS OF SHAME
So having established that railways are not there for moving people and freight about as safely as possible and that the silver birch, buddleia and brambles are as important as signals and track, who are we listening to here? Well, for a start you might wonder why an expert in land use who normally comments on farming m…
