ROLAND Pearson (Letters, Monday May 2) has accurately summarised how bad the proposed Towthorpe Road site is for Haxby railway station.

As a professional railway engineer, I agree this site is a dreadful option. Worse, I find the basic concept deeply flawed. What problems will a new station solve? None.

READ MORE: Haxby station plan: "The Lib Dem's flagship idea is slowly going down"

Today, the line has an hourly York-Scarborough service of 17 trains per day each way. These are the trains which will stop at Haxby and no others. Only 68 passengers per day are forecast to use the station when built at a cost approaching £50 million! It therefore has no conceivable business case.

We can do better. With only an hourly service, each track of the York-Scarborough line is unused for 55 minutes every hour and I have in mind an exciting idea to exploit the line’s massive spare capacity. As a former LibDem councillor, I met Cllrs Keith Aspden and Andrew Waller to share my ideas. They were very interested.

The problem is not the councillors (of any party); it is the council officers who advise them. The officers tend to welcome new ideas with a bucket of cold water.

Haxby Station is a perfect example of the politicians’ syllogism at work. “We must do something.” “this is something.” “Good, let’s do it.” (Patel’s Rwanda plan?).

A station at Towthorpe Road is a crazy idea seeking to solve a non-existent problem.

Quentin Macdonald,

Manor Farm, Church Lane,

Nether Poppleton, York

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