There’s the old saying ‘Not in my backyard’ and I guess the same would partly apply to me if I were ever confronted with the building of a railway line or motorway at the back of my house. But it seems to me there are two sets of rules about road and rail with local and national Government - and road, with it’s lesser green attributes, appears to always win the day.In Kent, people delayed the start of the high speed rail link for a long time. There were local groups which successfully re-routed some of the track, had tunnels built and even underground tunnels for Badgers etc. It would also seem that the Government of that time didn’t seem to see it as priority anyway and so, whilst the French had built their part and had trains running up and down at speeds up to 160mph, over here they were restricted to 150 year old urban lines and crawled at a 90mph maximum (and that was only on some 30% of available tracks).

Yet, come the building of a Motorway through Kent - and ‘tally ho’, bulldozers out, bulders villages popping up everywhere and job done in a flash. They did put a few sound proof walls (well sort of) along some parts, but that was it.

It seems to me that of the two, the Government is discarding the fact that train travel is better for the environment and does not pollute the atmosphere anywhere near the amount that cars do.

From a noise point of view, neither are what anyone with a right mind would want anywhere near them, but a high speed train passing by at 160mph, maybe twice an hour is surely better than the continuous drone of traffic noise which in this part of the country is endless from Lorries etc. I’m sure though that the same applies anywhere in any country.

There is a chance they are building a ring road around the back of my place in about 5 years time and I have attended a few meetings,

not in the shallow hope it won’t be built, but to ensure that the environment is kept as good as it can be.
With the Government making huge amounts of money from cars, linked to the fact they sold off the Railway network at a stupid price just to rid themselves of it and pass the buck onto the next lot in power, it is not surprising that car sales will grow and although there are signs of more people travelling by train - most would rather go door to door unhealthy than sitting back relaxing watching the world go by.

But who’s fault is it? !!