High Speed Rail Link to Scotland announced

It is odd to think that the United Kingdom only has one High Speed Rail link, and that was only recently completed, linking St Pancras to Folkestone, and allowing the EuroStar to journey between London and Paris in less than 150 minutes.

However, today Network Rail has announced plans for a High Speed Rail link between London and the Scottish cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, passing Birmingham and Manchester en route.

This line, estimated to cost £34bn, is a significant step forward for the UK, and will surely be welcomed by road and air users alike.

Currently the air journey from Heathrow to Manchester takes 65 minutes, but that does not include additional time requirement for checking in and getting your luggage on the other side, nor the travel to get from Central London or Manchester to the respective airports. Compare this with the anticipated 66 minute rail journey between these two cities.

For business users, consider also the fact that travelling along terra firma allows you to continuously utilise such things as your mobile phone or Blackberry, and be less concerned about use of a laptop en route on a train than you would be in a plane.

If you have ever tried to travel by car between London and Manchester, you would quickly realise that it might take you 66 minutes from London just to reach the M25 - let alone get anywhere close to Cheshire!
beyond the traffic, the anticipated speeds of 180mph that the high speed train is expected to achieve is two and a half times faster than the motorway speed limit.
Oh - and you are likely to miss the nasty traffic on the M40, M42 and the lovely M6.

It appears that national Rail's research into commuter preference supports the fact that commuters are likely to embrace and switch over to the high speed route, were it available, preferring this to the road or air options.

But there is a down side.
One report I have seen this morning refers to an anticipated construction time of 20 years to complete. I find this mind boggling, given that in the Middle Ages great cathedrals took that amount of time to be built. I cannot fathom how in our advanced age we cannot get it right to construct a railway line in a reasonable amount of time.
Secondly, it was announced yesterday that the upgrade work on the Jubilee Line of the London Underground system is running late, and is not likely to be completed by the 2009 year end deadline. London Mayor Boris Johnson has branded this "unacceptable" - but regardless of what you call it, we still won't have the Jubilee line back in January of 2010.

And that begs the question - will a project of this magnitude ever be able to be completed within the schedule and on time? It took several years more just to complete Wembley stadium.

So whilst the high speed line north from London would appear to be the cleverest idea that anyone has come up with since Richard Trevithick put a steam engine on wheels, it might be some years - even decades before you or I get to benefit from this.

In the mean time, I suggest you check the travel information for details of what traffic jam is currently holding up the M6.


For more see:
BBC Business News
Evening Standard