Your article on tree-felling by the railway (‘Mile after mile of stumps’: anger at trackside tree cull, 30 April) gives a misleading impression. With 20,000 miles of track and many millions of trees growing on the lineside, managing vegetation on the railway is a full-time job and one of our most important safety issues.

In the last year, vegetation management and incidents caused by vegetation cost the railway £100m. Storm, rain and wind events resulted in 1,500 incidents where trees caused disruption to the network. Last year around 1,000 trains collided with fallen trees or large branches – a record number – with many more instances of trees and branches blocking and closing lines. Such incidents can cause travel chaos for passengers and have the potential to cause an accident.

Trees and plants can hamper our ability to maintain a safe railway in several ways. Lineside vegetation can obscure signals, get blown on to tracks, or grow so much that our staff do not have a safe place to wait while trains pass. Train acceleration and braking may also be affected by the leaves of some broadleaf trees when they fall in the autumn.

At Network Rail we are, of course, very aware of the impact that removing trees and vegetation can have on local communities. We particularly know that this can come as something of a shock for people who have become accustomed to lines of trees or hedges near their homes or workplaces. But for the safety of our passengers and employees we have no option but to take action to reduce the risk posed to the safe operation of the railway.

We are a big, responsible, public company that takes its environmental obligations seriously. We manage our lineside to provide healthy biodiversity, advised by experts in the field. We do remove trees that are, or could be, dangerous, or impact on the reliability of services that serve over 4.5 million people every day. We make our policies in this area public, in an open and transparent way, and work with environmental organisations to help us get it right when we do have to take action, including undertaking ecological surveys, and inspections and sweeps if we do have to take safety-critical action during nesting season.

Kevin Groves

Head of media, Network Rail

• We overlook a railway line where there’s been vegetation management by Network Rail. The programme was not “secretive”. Those directly affected by the work were consulted, with letters circulated explaining what was being done and why. Network Rail consulted with the council and environmental groups, avoided the bird nesting season, and will plant trees elsewhere to mitigate the loss of lineside trees.

Before the 1970s these trees were not allowed to grow, and they only reached their current size when British Rail stopped vegetation management to save money. Railway lines, their embankments and cuttings are not wildlife habitats – they are railway lines designed for the reliable operation of trains. Network Rail’s vegetation management should be presented as a good example of proactive maintenance.

Nicholas Crosby

West Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire

• In common with many rail users I am deeply concerned by Network Rail’s plans for mass tree-felling on many of our emblematic train routes. I was heartbroken to read about the mass of sawdust and logs on the beautiful Manchester-to-Leeds trans-Pennine route that I sometimes travel on, for example.

While I fully appreciate the need to manage trackside growth in the interests of safety and efficiency, the scale of felling described in the article appears to far exceed that aim. Biodiversity experts have long reminded us about the importance of railways as green corridors, a unique haven vital for the sustainable reproduction of bird and animal populations. Furthermore, the trees themselves form a significant part of our national patrimony, all the more so for their visibility to the travelling public. Is Network Rail aware that many of us choose to travel by train precisely because we love the leafy and wooded journeys?

Dr Daniel Carter

Cambridge

• I have witnessed the devastation caused by Network Rail’s “management” of trees on railway land, all along the line south of Manchester down to Bristol. Their statement that they are working with environmental advisers is absolute nonsense. All trees, no matter what their size or distance from the track, are simply being roughly chopped down, leaving what looks like wasteland.

This policy is a disaster, and the pathetic excuse that it will eventually save passengers money is almost blasphemous compared with what we have lost, as passengers, each time we look out of the train windows.

Hilary Lang

Frome, Somerset

• I must take issue with your article. As a frequent train traveller I have, in recent weeks, noticed approvingly the opened-up landscape views offered by the cutting back of obtrusive lineside vegetation. One of the long-lost joys of rail travel in the days of steam was the panoramic window view of the countryside (and the neat, litter-free trackside), in contrast to mile after mile of the oppressive green tunnel so often experienced today. Surely as well as being an operational necessity this policy actually presents a bonus for the appreciative rail traveller?

Alan Fowler

Newcastle upon Tyne

• Network Rail should be made to plant and maintain a tree for each one it cuts down. Perhaps that would make its actions more proportionate. And don’t trees hold railway embankments together, preventing landslips and flooding – possibly greater dangers than the occasional leaf?

Maggie Johnston

St Albans, Hertfordshire

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