50 years on from Buchanan on traffic and Beeching on trains: are the issues different now?

It’s 50 years since the publication in 1963 of two pivotal reports on British transport: The Reshaping of British Railways by Dr Richard Beeching, and Traffic in Towns by Colin (later Sir Colin) Buchanan. Both represented sea changes in the accepted transport wisdom of the time. What do they tell us today?

Beeching’s report said that the then railway network was a financial basket case, with too many little used and loss-making secondary routes. It called for a focus on core routes...

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