[James Howard]

If you are talking 320 people per day and that means 160 each way, and assume two people per car, you are looking at removing 160 car journeys and replacing them with 10 train journeys.

Depending on whether they are 2 or 4 car trains, I would seriously doubt that the total amount of fuel consumed would be less. Especially when you add in the fuel used by staff to get into work.

In fact you can probably assume that you are removing less than 100 car journeys because a lot of passengers would have either taken the bus or wouldn't have traveled at all because they are out for a jaunt on the free travel.

I am not saying that there is no social need for the service, but you can forget about arguing for it based on green credentials.

What they really need to do with these services is go all out in providing commuter services which means at least 4 trains to land you at the city ends between 07:30 and 09:00. And then the same again to get you home. Then don't bother with paid parking for at least the first few years and fill the trains up with daily commuters. I guess you would need to be using single car trains to provide this level of frequency given the population densities.

Blowing 100 million quid and then ending up serving 320 people per day is just stupid. If you were commuting on the system in effect, they would have just invested 300 grand to get you into work. It would have been cheaper and greener to just buy you a house near where you work.