In some countries road transport is taking over rail services as the main means of transportation Is this a positive or a negative development To what extent is this trend also true in your country

Both road transport and rail services have very long history in transportation, but if the road transport is taking over the rail services, there will be more impacts than benefits.
In my opinion, there may be just one benefit of road transport which is the mobility, and this benefit can only apply to the road transport when it is not during the rash hours. However, bicycle is a very good choice for short distance travel. It has many advantages over the other transports, such as no pollution, less cost and etc, but in long distance travel, bicycle is not very ideal.

For rail services, there are at least four benefits made them better than the road transport.
Firstly, people spend less money on rail services. Most of buses belong to some private companies, they will tend to charge people more money to make profit, so the cost of taking road transport is relatively higher than rail services.

Secondly, rail services have less pollution than road transport. In most cases, trains are running on electricity, so they will not generate any carbon dioxide, but for buses and cars, carbon dioxide is the major emission gas.

Thirdly, the capacity of moving large amount of people at once is better than any road transports. For any big events or festivals, train is always the ideal transport to move visitors in and out quickly. It may takes buses back and forward many time, but it will just takes a train on time. In this way, government can also save huge amount of money.

In my country, there are more road transport than rail services due to the limited land spaces and lager population. However, my country is developing the rail services, so I believe it will soon become the main transportation.