Into the Sidings

By 2020, high speed rail lines will criss-cross much of western Europe, striking south to Naples, Malaga and Seville, hurtling east to Berlin and west to Lisbon. Services will link Madrid and Barcelona, Rome and Milan, Paris and Marseilles and all the major cities in between, spurting across the Channel to London, where everything grinds to a sudden, desultory halt.

In our remote corner of the continent, Network Rail last week promised "further work" on a high speed link between London, Newcastle and Edinburgh but warned that it would only stimulate passenger demand on the East Coast Mainline, which is already projected to rise by 40% over the next ten years. Their report suggests increasing prices to "restrict growth to levels which can be accommodated within the capacity available," a sad but predictable end to decades of underfunding and mismanagement. Pricing people off trains only moves the problem to the road network at great detriment to both the economy and the environment.