Almost silently, Britain's transport planners are planning a bonfire of secondary services. In the Department for Transport and the offices of Britain's big private rail operators, plans are being drawn up to hack back the size of Britain's rail network, reducing services and closing lines, especially in rural areas.

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John Armitt, the outgoing director of Network Rail, told the Observer yesterday that "we accept heavy rail is not always the best solution, particularly in some ... outer parts of the network". His polite language disguised a melancholy shift in government attitudes, in favour of reducing services on some routes. That has become easier with rules removing safeguards that protected lines from closure.

A product of the 2005 Railways Act, the rules nominally help transport planning and efficiency but, in reality, aim to save money from a rail budget bloated by the vast inefficiencies of privatisation. Virgin, whose west coast route was profitable under British Rail, was last week offered £1.4bn by the government to run services until 2012. GNER, which runs the east coast route, is in financial meltdown. None of this is the fault of Britain's local train services, most of which are busier than they were at privatisation. But they will be made the victim of cost-cutting, the easiest to shut, regardless of the consequences for passengers.

This threat was underlined in October by the publication of an extraordinary Department for Transport document, Railways Closures Guidance. It offers a step-by-step explanation of how to shut train lines, its thinking dominated by economics of the crudest and most-short-term sort. "Value for money is a central criterion in determining whether a proposal should go ahead." There is no requirement for anything more than token public consultation or any regular need to consider the environmental consequences. "Domestic air services may ... be a relevant alternative" to trains, it adds, a mockery of green thinking.

With malign ingenuity, rural closures are likely to be presented as environmentally wise, since empty trains pollute more than full cars. But no work has been done to test the implausible claim that passengers will club together to share their journeys, or switch to buses. Past closures suggest road traffic will grow and car-occupancy stay low. Many of Britain's remaining secondary lines boost tourism and employment. They survived Dr Beeching and Margaret Thatcher. It is incredible that a government which claims to put the environment first is even thinking about shutting down railways.