Editing Beeching cuts (section)

===Replacement buses and proposed alternatives===
The "[[bustitution]]" policy that replaced rail services with buses also failed. In many cases the replacement bus services were slower and less convenient than the trains they were meant to replace, and so were unpopular.{{sfn|Henshaw|1994|p=}}{{page needed|date=June 2023}} Replacement bus services were often run between the (now disused) station sites (some of which were some distance from the population centres they served), thus losing any potential advantage over the closed rail service. Most replacement bus services lasted less than two years before they were removed due to a lack of patronage,<ref name=serpell/> leaving large parts of the country with no public transport.

The assumption at the time{{citation needed|date=May 2010}} was that car owners would drive to the nearest railhead (which was usually the junction where the closed branch line would otherwise have taken them) and continue their journey onwards by train. In practice, having left home in their cars, people used them for the whole journey. Similarly for freight: without branch lines, the railways' ability to transport goods "door to door" was dramatically reduced. As in the passenger model, it was assumed that lorries would pick up goods and transport them to the nearest railhead, where they would be taken across the country by train, unloaded onto another lorry and taken to their destination. The development of the [[motorway]] network, the advent of [[containerisation]], improvements in lorries and the economic costs of having two [[Break bulk cargo|break-bulk points]] combined to make long-distance road transport a more viable alternative.

Many of the closed lines had run at only a small deficit. Some lines such as the [[Sunderland station|Sunderland]]-to-West Hartlepool line cost only £291 per mile to operate.{{sfn|White|1986|p=}}{{page needed|date=June 2023}} Closures of such small-scale loss-making lines made little difference to the overall deficit.

Possible changes to [[light railway]]-type operations were attacked by Beeching, who rejected all proposals for cost savings that would not make a route profitable: "Similarly, consideration of the cost figures will show that thinning out the trains, or thinning out the stations, would not make a service self-supporting even if it had no adverse effect on revenue".{{sfn|Beeching|1963a|p=18}} There is little in the Beeching report recommending general economies (in administration costs, working practices and so on). For example, a number of the stations that were closed were fully staffed 18 hours a day, on lines controlled by multiple [[Victorian era]] signalboxes (again fully staffed, often throughout the day). Operating costs could have been reduced by reducing staff and removing redundant services on these lines while keeping the stations open. This has since been successfully achieved by British Rail and its successors on lesser-used lines that survived the cuts, such as the [[East Suffolk Line]] from Ipswich to Lowestoft, which survives as a "basic railway".{{sfn|Henshaw|1994|p=}}{{page needed|date=June 2023}}

The [[Marshlink line]] between {{rws|Ashford International}} and {{rws|Hastings}}, threatened with closure in the Beeching Report, is now seen as important due to the opening of the Channel Tunnel and [[High Speed 1]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent-business/county-news/new-seaside-service-in-five-15153/ |title=High speed service to run between Ashford and Hastings from London after Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin attends rail summit |work=Kent Business |date=2 April 2014 |access-date=8 March 2015}}</ref> Traffic on the single-track [[Golden Valley Line]] between Kemble and [[Swindon railway station|Swindon]] and the [[Cotswold Line]] between Oxford and Worcester has increased significantly, and double track has now been reinstated on the Golden Valley Line, partly to facilitate a diversionary route during electrification and other works on the Severn tunnel line.{{citation needed|date=April 2022}}