Simon Fanshawe's excellent column helped to highlight a totally ignored major strategic planning brief effecting Brighton, Hove, Shoreham and surrounding areas over the next decade and beyond (Argus, October 19).

For Brighton, with its London dormitory image and other English Channel-isolated backwater resorts are to have a future, they must cut their umbilical cord (Victorian branch railways) dependency on London.

They could be replaced by encompassing the outside world of business, industry and tourism with the construction of an English Channel Eurostar coastway railway to carry freight and passengers between the Channel Tunnel and Penzance.

Why should London and the North attract all the business and visitors? A modern freight train can carry the equivalent volume of 250 lorries. Even if a huge M27 motorway from Folkestone to Honiton is constructed, finite crude oil price rises will make railways eventually cheaper than motorways.

-John Stanaway, Lorna Road, Hove