With all the problems that people have associated with local rail services in recent years - unreliability, overcrowding, shabbiness - the idea of opening more lines in a system which seems hard-pressed to cope with the ones that already exist might not seem a very good one.

However, there is no doubt that road congestion is growing worse by the month. It is taking people longer and longer to get to and from work or to go about their daily business. Any new and imaginative proposals to tackle it are worth considering.

Certainly the latest suggestion from the Countryside Agency that some suburban and rural lines, closed after Dr Beeching wielded his axe on Britain's rail network in the early 1960s, could usefully be reopened merits careful examination.

Many of the closed lines are lost forever. Housing estates, factories and office blocks have been built over them. Cuttings have been filled in, embankments levelled, bridges removed. However, the agency has identified six possible lines in the Bradford district which it thinks could reasonably be restored for the benefit of commuters and businesses.

People are keen to travel by train. What puts them off is that too often they are not reliable, clean or efficient. There is surely an opening here for new private firms to come in and show the established operators how it could be done.

If the services on the revived lines were to start from scratch with new bus-style carriages used elsewhere for short journeys and could provide standards of service which travellers have every right to expect, and at the right price, their popularity would be guaranteed.