I WRITE with reference to the story about Boton’s Bus/Rail interchange, Thursday, September 4.

In it David Crausby said: “The road connections to Manchester are bad too and people have been driven off the trains on to the roads.

“So if we can get an improvement to rail services then maybe that will have a positive impact on the roads.”

I think that is only part of the story. Sure you need the trains for people to travel on and train use generally is at an all-time high.

People will use trains if it is easy and economical for them. However, ask those drivers queuing up to get into Manchester when they last used a train and when they last used a bus? My guess is you will find that lots have used trains but very few will have used buses.

On a dark wet winter morning your typical business commuter does not want to walk to a bus stop, getting wet on the way, wait for a bus, travel to a station and then catch a train.

What they want is to drive to a station with a big adjacent car park, park up and then catch a train, like at Manchester Piccadilly or Milton Keynes Central (as two examples).

However, I keep looking for the bit in the plans for Bolton’s new station that mentions this big car park and I don’t see it.

In the past I regularly travelled to London, almost always driving from Bolton to Manchester Piccadilly where I could reliably expect to be able to get on the car park.

I tried Bolton once or twice, but once you have missed your train once because you can’t park, you don’t do it again. The trains and train connections from Bolton to London (or anywhere else) are generally fine, the parking at Bolton is awful.

Also note that people who park at town or city centre car parks are likely also to nip to local shops on the way home. Having paid for the parking, they may as well make the most of it.

Imagining that you are going to persuade masses of commuters to leave their cars to travel by bus to a railway station is naïve.

Peter Kelly Bolton