I FEEL I must respond to the Railway Clowns' heading you gave my letter (January 11).

My grievance was not so much with the railways, but with a Government that keeps telling us to use public transport wherever possible, yet gives very little incentive to do so.

The closing of so many lines in the 1960s was a wonderful example of Governmental lack of vision for the future.

Even on a local scale, decisions regarding transport and congestion seem to have been totally misjudged. Take the Park&Ride schemes.

Wouldn't they have been better sited outside the ring road to take congestion away from it, particularly the northern stretch between Poppleton and Strensall that should never have been a single carriageway in the first place? Another fine example of blinkered foresight.

Why can't the railway stop at Haxby, Strensall or Dringhouses the way it does at Poppleton? Even in my village, the old station platform can still be seen and wouldn't take too much effort to re-establish if someone really wanted to do it.

But maybe the bureaucratic clowns aren't so daft after all? Every legal vehicle on our roads pays road tax. All the replacement parts from tyres to exhausts and even servicing, charge VAT.

Petrol would cost a lot less were it not for the huge taxes imposed upon it, so maybe it serves the Government better to allow rail prices to spiral while the congestion on our roads keeps getting worse?

John Ward, Pinfold Terrace, Tollerton, York.