Friends of the Rail Forum

Government unveils high-speed rail plan to ground short flights

Replacing plane journeys with ultra-fast train services 'manifestly in the public interest', transport secretary says


* Dan Milmo and Julian Glover
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 August 2009 19.22 BST


The government has made the demise of domestic air travel an explicit policy target for the first time by aiming to replace short-haul flights with a new 250mph high-speed rail network.

The transport secretary, Lord Adonis, said switching 46 million domestic air passengers a year to a multibillion-pound north-south rail line was "manifestly in the public interest". Marking a government shift against aviation, Adonis added that rail journeys should be preferred to plane trips.

"For reasons of carbon reduction and wider environmental benefits, it is manifestly in the public interest that we systematically replace short-haul aviation with high-speed rail. But we would have to have, of course, the high-speed network before we can do it," he said.

In an interview with the Guardian to launch a three-day special report on high-speed rail, Adonis revealed that plans for a new generation of ultra-fast train services are well advanced. They include:

• The publication by the end of the year of a route from London to Birmingham, including the framework to extend the line northward to Scotland.

• Building cross-party support for the network, which could see a line to the West Midlands built by 2020.

• Running high-speed trains on the existing network, which could reduce journey times from London to Scotland to three and a half hours.

• Possibly funding the £7bn London-to-Birmingham line with a public-private partnership.

Adonis said domestic and European flights to and from the UK, which carry 169 million passengers on 1.9m trips a year, should be "progressively replaced" by a high-speed rail network that will relieve congestion on existing lines and shorten train journey times across the UK.

Flights to north-west Europe are the most realistic target, after airline sources warned that further-flung destinations such as Madrid or Prague are still expected to be dominated by air travel. Short-haul flights are the most popular journey in British aviation, accounting for seven out of 10 flights. But train travel is also popular in the UK –the British public already make 1.3bn passenger rail journeys each year – so Adonis hopes it will make a serious dent in the use of short-haul air travel.

"I would like to see short-haul aviation – not just domestic aviation, but short-haul aviation – progressively replaced by rail, including high-speed rail," Adonis said. "If we want to see [this] progressive replacement … then we have got to have a high-speed rail system that links our major conurbations and makes them far more accessible to Europe, too."

The government has pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050, prompting ministers to push for use of electric cars and more investment in cycle routes. Against that backdrop, Adonis said rail should take priority over air travel.

Last night the British Air Transport Association (Bata), whose members include British Airways, Flybe and BMI – all carriers with domestic operations – said the government would not be able to eliminate flights within the UK altogether.

Roger Wiltshire, Bata secretary general, said there were still flights from the UK to Paris and Brussels despite the high-speed Eurostar service. "There are high-speed networks in France, Germany and Japan but they still have domestic air routes between their major cities. It does not have to be a question of one or the other."

Adonis's comments were welcomed by campaigners who, earlier this year, berated the government for backing a third runway at Heathrow. Richard Hebditch, campaigns director at the Campaign for Better Transport, said: "It does not make sense to be flying short distances if there is a direct rail alternative. This clearly marks a major shift away from previous government policy and the government now needs to revisit its decision on Heathrow."

However, Adonis said a high-speed rail scheme would not undermine an aviation policy that calls for new runways at Stansted and Heathrow over the next decade.

"If you look at projections for long-haul air demand the third runway just on long- haul demand alone is justified," he said. According to government estimates, air passenger numbers will nearly double to 465 million a year by 2030.

A high-speed line will have to be the UK's main infrastructure project if it is to go ahead. "If we make it a national priority, then it is affordable. If we don't, then it is not. It's as simple as that," Adonis said. He has established a company to draw up plans, to be submitted to the Department for Transport later this year.


Better rail links within UK and to Europe could curb short-haul air travel

* Dan Milmo
* The Guardian, Wednesday 5 August 2009


Short-haul flights are the dominant form of air travel in the UK and are a highly profitable business for low-cost operators such as Ryanair and easyJet. While British Airways is struggling with falling demand for long-haul destinations that pushed it into a record loss of £401m last year, Britain's two largest short-haul carriers are expanding aggressively in Britain and continental Europe.

There are 1.9m domestic and European flights to and from the UK each year, carrying a total of 169 million passengers. Even with a high-speed rail network that touches all corners of Europe, it is unlikely that destinations such as Barcelona and Vienna will be shut out of the British airline market altogether.

This has prompted a bullish response to repeated calls from the environmental lobby for tougher curbs on short-haul flights, through heavier taxation and greater investment in the rail network.

Nonetheless, Lord Adonis's vision of better rail links within the UK and from Britain to Europe could make a serious dent in short-haul travel. Of those 169 million passengers, around 45% are domestic travellers or are passengers on flights to and from France, Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium, all markets vulnerable to a government crackdown on short-haul flights. There is mounting evidence that a resurgent rail market is eating into domestic air travel. According to BAA, owner of London's three largest airports including Heathrow, domestic air travel fell by 10% in the first six months of this year, a decline greater than the reduction in long haul and European flights at the same airports.

The Department for Transport has an important role to play if the UK is to meet its target of an 80% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Transport is the second largest emitter in the UK behind the energy industry, accounting for 21% of domestic greenhouse gas emissions.

Within that transport segment, domestic aviation accounts for around 1.6% of the total. Green campaigners admit that it is a small number but argue that domestic aviation should be targeted because it is a major driver of airport expansion, accounting for a third of all commercial flights in the UK.

It is likely that the government will have to rely on taxation as well as high-speed trains to cut permanently the number of short-haul flights to and from the UK.

Air passenger duty, nominally an environmental tax on all travellers departing UK airports, raises around £2bn per year and will rise from £10 a short-haul flight to £11 this November. There is speculation within the green lobby that the Tories are actively considering heavier aviation taxes to help fund a high-speed network.



High-speed rail network: the finances

* Dan Milmo
* The Guardian, Wednesday 5 August 2009

Proposals for a high-speed rail network have drawn a sceptical response from certain quarters within Whitehall and the rail industry. Doubts centre on the financial burden of building a scheme that, if it ever reaches Scotland, could cost up to £30bn – the most expensive British infrastructure project of modern times.

"There has been a British unwillingness to invest in large infrastructure projects in any consistent way," said Tony Travers, director of the Greater London group at the London School of Economics. He suspects instead that the UK is about to enter a prolonged pause in transport investment.

According to accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, government spending needs to be cut twice as fast as implied by the recent budget over the three years to 2013-14.

Department for Transport officials are concerned that projects already under way, such as the £16bn Crossrail line in London, are under threat, let alone schemes yet to receive funding commitments. Earlier this year the permanent secretary to the DfT, Robert Devereux, indicated at a transport industry seminar that capital expenditure on projects will be £30bn lower than expected over the next decade.

Plane to train: the ultra-fast route to a travel revolution

* Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 August 2009 22.40 BST

Europe's largest high-speed rail operator has predicted that domestic air travel in the UK will lose millions of passengers to a 250mph train service if an ultra-fast network becomes a reality.

The chief executive of the French rail giant, SNCF, said the proposed network could dominate travel from London to all British cities as far north as Glasgow. Guillaume Pepy said the "crowning success" of Eurostar, which now controls 80% of the London to Paris and Brussels market, could be repeated if a replica of the French TGV system arrives in the UK.

"Distances as the crow flies in the UK allow the possibility to link almost all main cities to London [by high-speed rail] in more or less three hours," he said.

Transport analysts argue that rail journeys must be around three hours long to be competitive with airline services on the same routes. Travelling from London-to-Glasgow takes four and a half hours on Virgin Trains and, as a consequence, airlines account for more than eight out of 10 journeys on that route. A TGV-style line would take passengers from London to Scotland in around three hours, according to SNCF.

Pepy's comments, in a presentation at a recent London transport conference, came as airlines dismissed claims by the transport secretary, Lord Adonis, that high-speed rail should replace domestic air travel in the UK. Pepy said: "Three hours' travel time by train means a share between 66% and 70% of the air and rail market." The UK domestic air market accounts for nearly 46 million passenger journeys a year, with many travellers taking flights to Heathrow airport in order to connect with long-distance services.

However, SNCF warned that strong lobbying by regional politicians could result in out-of-the-way routes being built ahead of more deserving destinations. Cities such as Manchester are already launching lobby groups to demand inclusion in the network, but Pepy indicated that some parts of the multibillion euro TGV project were "more politically than rationally driven". Pointing to high-speed routes to further-flung destinations such as La Rochelle and Evian that had been built by the mid-90s, Pepy said a much-needed eastbound line was neglected for more than a decade and not commissioned until 2007.

The SNCF boss also indicated that the taxpayer would have to shoulder the financial burden of a high-speed network in the UK. The state and regional governments are paying nearly three-quarters of the €5.1bn (£4.3bn) price tag for the new line from Paris to Alsace in eastern France. "They want it, they pay for it," said Pepy. The TGV network made a profit of €798m in 2008 and generated a margin, or return on sales, of 18.5% – far higher than the average of around 3% for UK train operators.

Adonis said the government was keen to tap expertise from SNCF and Japan as it planned a high-speed network for the UK. "I am keen to engage closely with international experts on high-speed rail, not least those from France and Japan who have the longest experience," he said. France's TGV network comprises nearly 1,200 miles of track and carried 100 million passengers last year. It is second only to Japan's high-speed system in terms of scale.

However, it is understood that the government has already rejected one approach raised by the SNCF presentation. Pepy mooted doubling the scale of any high-speed network by building four lines rather than two, citing an error in calculating demand for the Paris-to-Lyon route. He said a new line between the capital and France's third largest city will now have to be built, because the original route has proven extremely popular and cannot be doubled from two tracks to four.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England said Pepy's comments heightened already strong concerns that a high-speed route would blight swaths of countryside. " The government needs to find a route that minimises the impact," said Gerald Kells of the CPRE.

I think that it will be a very long time before the UK gets another HS line. Remember the NIMBY's who organised trips to France, and stood alongside the TGV tracks to measure the noise so that the readings could be used in court and hopefully block the building of the line from the Channel Tunnel to London.
The UK really does need more lines that will remove the need to build another runway at London Heathrow, and provide a cheaper and faster way of getting to/from London. I have just paid GBP444.00 for a walk-on return ticket by air from London to Aberdeen that takes just under 4 hours city centre to city centre, the train price was GBP310 but would take seven and half hours. A high speed line to Edinburgh would probably reduce that rail journey time by about one and half hours.

London-Birmingham rail link plans take Tory victory into account

* Dan Milmo and Julian Glover
*guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 August 2009 20.02 BST

Plans for a high-speed rail link from London to Birmingham via Heathrow are being drawn up on the basis that a third runway will not be built, in anticipation of a Conservative victory in the general election.

High Speed Two, the company charged with proposing a north-south route, is working on a business model that features a Heathrow station but does not factor in a new runway at the UK's largest airport, reflecting Tory policy to block expansion.

In an interview with the Guardian, the High Speed Two chairman, Sir David Rowlands, and the company's chief engineer, Andrew McNaughton, said the scheme required a plan that could be used by a Labour or Conservative government. "Our ambition is to produce a report that is useful to the government before and after the election. We are modelling Heathrow with and without a third runway, so that it is equally useful to either kind of government."

Lord Adonis, the transport secretary, has made high-speed rail a flagship government policy, but the Conservatives were the first to adopt the concept of a 250mph network, announcing last September that they will scrap a third runway in favour of a new generation of rail networks.

Writing on the Guardian's Comment is Free website yesterday, the Conservative shadow transport minister, Stephen Hammond, said the government had "finally caught up" with Tory policy. "It has long been clear to me that if we are going to build a greener and more competitive Britain, we need to rise to the high-speed rail challenge," he said. "If elected, the Conservative party will rise to this challenge in government and we will build high-speed rail."

Campaigners against a third runway have pounced on Adonis's attack on domestic aviation in a Guardian interview this week in which he said short-haul flights should be replaced by high-speed rail. John Stewart, chair of the Hacan protest group, said scrapping short-haul flights at Heathrow would counter the need for expansion by freeing up enough space on the existing runways to accommodate demand for long-haul flights. "The evidence is clear that investment in affordable fast rail services would be a viable alternative for at least a fifth of all flights currently using Heathrow. That would free up enough landing space for an increase in long-haul flights without any need to build a new runway," he said.

A third runway at Heathrow would boost the business case for a high-speed line because expansion would see the airport handling 135 million passengers a year, from 67 million currently, as annual flights rise from 480,000 to more than 700,000. Adonis wants a high-speed link at Heathrow to attract the 5.6 million domestic passengers who currently take internal flights to and from the airport in order to connect with long-haul services. He believes a fast train service running as far north as Scotland will ultimately replace all domestic flights to Heathrow.

Rowlands said the report, to be delivered to Adonis at the end of the year, would allow the government to push on with public consultation and planning applications.

However, critics of the policy argue that it would be a multibillion-pound waste of investment. "Road schemes tend to offer better value for money than their rail equivalents and in an age when every penny really does count, the financial arguments for projects like HS2 do not seem to carry enough weight," said Philip Gomm, of the RAC Foundation.

The cost of the first phase, the 110-mile stretch from London to Birmingham, has been estimated at £7bn by the Greengauge 21 high-speed rail group. The High Speed Two chairman said his report would avoid a definitive price tag and would produce a range of potential costs. However, he raised the prospect of a prolonged battle between the Treasury and future transport secretaries by admitting that it would require a substantial contribution from the taxpayer.

McNaughton said high-speed rail building would become as big a feature of British infrastructure as motorways were in the latter half of the 20th century. "This is the 21st-century equivalent of the motorway network."


High-speed rail link project leaders enthuse about new line's benefits

* Julian Glover and Dan Milmo
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 August 2009 22.08 BST

Professor Andrew McNaughton, chief engineer of the High Speed Two project, and Sir David Rowlands, its chairman, explain the plans

How fast will the trains go?

"The UK line would be 400kph [250mph] as ultimate service speed," says McNaughton. That is faster than any rail line currently running in the world. But he expects the line to open with a lower top speed and then build towards 400kph. "The next generation of trains coming out of factories have a service speed of 360 kph [223mph]."

How long will journeys take?

London to Birmingham "in anything from just under 50 minutes to 55 minutes", McNaughton says, against 85 minutes currently. After that times will depend on the route, with time savings growing the longer the route extends. He predicts Birmingham to Manchester will take around 35 minutes.

"Two cities become one. That is when you start to change economics. Only high-speed rail can do that," says Rowlands. "At the moment between Leeds and Manchester there are three different services, all of them desperate, and the motorway doesn't work in the winter." High-speed rail could halve the journey time across the Pennines. .

How much will it cost to build?

"A network to Scotland is inevitably expensive. We are not yet in position where we can put a real number on that," says Rowlands. "Obviously we will want to maximise private sector involvement but no high-speed network would be build without a very high taxpayer contribution." He says it would be more than the £17bn already being spent on London's Crossrail line and, according to one estimate, the cost of a London-Glasgow route could be up to £29bn. High Speed Two will produce a range of costs when it reports back to the government later this year.

Will it be expensive to use?

Yes, especially if you don't book in advance. Fares will be higher than current trains, as is the case with the recently opened high-speed commuter line from St Pancras in central London to Kent that operates on the High Speed 1 route used by Eurostar. The cost of a return fare from Ebbsfleet International in Kent to St Pancras is £24.30 on the Southeastern high-speed service, an increase of 34% on the conventional service. "It is unlikely to operate at fare levels below those of existing networks," says Rowlands. "Whether there is a premium element is for the government of the day."

What will the service be like?

The route will be able to take between 15 and 20 trains an hour, in each direction. Each train will be able to take up to 1,000 people.

"High-speed rail is a new transport system, it is not just old rail that goes a bit faster," says Rowlands. "What would be so exciting about high-speed rail is that it gets people out of the car. It is a totally different experience." Punctuality will also improve. "It is perfectly predicable that it will arrive plus or minus 10 seconds," adds McNaughton. "This is a world where we are down to seconds. High-speed gives you very high reliability and capacity."

Will it wreck the countryside?

"There will be people upset that a high-speed rail line passes through the bottom of their garden or passes through the Chilterns," says Rowlands. "You have got to take a railway through an area of outstanding natural beauty."

Will it be noisy?

Yes, but less than people think, says Rowlands. Experience from the high-speed line through Kent showed "expectations were far worse than reality. People believed the Eurostar trains would be thunderous, even heard from far away, and they might as well be living under Heathrow. None of that turned out to be true. I can remember my discussions with the RSPB, which was concerned about the impact of the Eurostar trains on Rainham marshes bird sanctuary. Those of us who are members of the RSPB – we both are – know the birds don't even notice the trains going past."

He added that modern engineering techniques will help muffle the noise generated by vehicles tearing through the countryside at 250mph. "You can design the railway to use natural forms. You can channel noise away from people and upwards and outwards. We believe we can do a really good job at somewhere sensitive like the Chilterns."

When could it open?

"With a government that really wanted to press on, on a very, very aggressive timetable and where nothing went wrong, it is possible to see what would be the first section through to the West Midlands open by late 2020," says Rowlands.

"In reality it will take longer to take this through the planning process. It will be the early part of the decade, rather than 2020." However, that would be for the first stage to Birmingham, with the rest of the network taking at least a further decade to complete.

Is it just for Londoners?

"There is a danger of this becoming too London-centric," says Rowlands. "Regional interconnectivty matters too. This is about Scotland to the Midlands, Birmingham to Manchester."


Conservationist fears high-speed line will scar Chiltern landscape

* Sam Jones
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 August 2009 21.44 BST

Even on a damp and grey August afternoon, Park Wood oozes a soothing bucolic ease. Kestrels and red kites soar through the drizzle over the low Chiltern hills, rain glistens on the sloe berries and the occasional rabbit skims across the fields among the thistles and cow parsley. If the noise from the nearby A4010 or the panting of a passenger diesel bothers the polo ponies grazing at the bottom of the valley, they do not lift their heads to acknowledge it.

The only uncomfortable presence in the landscape is Colin White, who stands on the hillside and worries about how much longer such scenes will last.

White and his colleagues at the Chilterns Conservation Board, the public body responsible for protecting the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, fear this bit of south Buckinghamshire could be "trashed" if the government goes ahead with its plan to drive a high-speed London-Birmingham line through the Chilterns.

"We have a cracking landscape here, and if people are out walking, their enjoyment is going to be spoilt by the constant noise of a building site," he said. "In the countryside, you want to hear birdsong, babbling brooks, the cackle of a pheasant or the bark of a fox – not noise from trains or roads."

White, the board's planning officer, said construction of the rail link would churn up the Chilterns for years, and leave the valleys disfigured with overheard powerlines and disrupted by fast and loud trains constantly buzzing through. He believes some in Westminster are using high-speed rail proposals to try to solve a problem that does not exist.

"Where are the hundreds of thousands of people who want to travel between London and Birmingham and Birmingham and London? We don't see them. There's no huge capacity issue."

He adds: "There's a huge push to stop the environmental disaster of air travel and towards trains ‑ which are undoubtedly good ‑ but we have enough of them already; we just need to make them more efficient, cheaper and better."

White's scepticism was echoed around the nearby village of Bradenham. "It's going to destroy the area," said Andrew Stubbings, a farmer who grazes the tranquil polo ponies in the valley. "The thought of a bloody big train coming through here is horrendous. It would be a blot on the landscape with the overhead cables and everything. Then there's the noise."

While he conceded that nimbyism was a powerful factor in his response, Stubbings said his arable and grazing land could be hugely affected. "I'd be very anti it, that's for sure."

Patience Dizon, an Alexander Technique health teacher who has lived in the village for 30 years, was equally nonplussed by the proposals. "Why would people be whizzing up the line from London to Birmingham? If it's for the common good, then fair enough, but if it's not, then it's not worth the disruption," she said.

Others, however, were more fatalistic. "If they've pencilled it in, that means it will happen," said Joe Kelly, a builder who lives on a nearby hill. "If it's on the other side of the hill, it wouldn't affect me. It could bring work to the pubs and restaurants." White, though, is bracing himself for a fight, as soon as the government shows its hand: "We're facing an information black hole."

The Chilterns Conservation Board is talking to county and district councils as well as the National Trust, which owns much of the land in the area. If its worst fears are realised, the board will lobby Huw Irranca-Davies, minister responsible for the natural environment. White said that a fight through the courts remained a possibility, although "we're publicly-funded, so we'd have to consider legal action very carefully".

Despite the board's small size, he was adamant that it will not be bullied into accepting a decision that will bring no benefit to the Chilterns. "We're passionate about protecting this area and we'd be failing in our duty if we weren't." And, he added, "we're independent. We can put a boot on and stick it in."


The fast and the furious – why new rail link will be controversial

• Secret London to Birmingham line planned in detail
• Fears of property blight and threat to countryside

* Julian Glover and Dan Milmo
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 August 2009 21.43 BST

The exact route for the new high-speed rail line from London to Birmingham is being planned in secret to within a few metres, officials behind the project have told the Guardian.

Details of the controversial line, which would run from London through protected countryside in the Chilterns, will be made public in December, handing thousands of homeowners an unwelcome Christmas present.

"We will meet our deadline and produce route alignment with options. In urban areas and pinch points it will be down to a few metres of where it will be and in open countryside 25 metres," said Sir David Rowland, the project's chairman. The Campaign to Protect Rural England has urged the government to choose a route that has the least impact on picturesque sites such as the Chiltern Hills, which stand in the way between the capital and the West Midlands.

Andrew McNaughton, chief engineer of High Speed Two, the government-backed company that is managing the scheme, said the public would be able to gauge the impact on their properties. "That means people will see what it will mean for their back garden," he said.

The line will run from west London, stopping at Heathrow airport before heading through Buckinghamshire. Engineers and designers at High Speed Two are trying to measure the likely noise and visual impact on the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and say they have exact details of the areas' listed buildings and ecologically important sites.

Rowlands dismissed industry speculation that the line would pass through the grounds of the prime minister's country house, Chequers, but agreed the impact on some people would be severe. House prices could be badly affected by the proposals, particularly if the planners pinpoint the route to within metres of where it could be built.

Rowlands said: "At the point when any government goes out to consultation on a detailed route proposal through the West Midlands, it will have potential blight on people's property and businesses."

He said the plans would be issued in detail to avoid widespread fear about different options that accompanied plans to build the high-speed Channel tunnel line through Kent in the 1980s.

"We are not telling you what routes we are looking at – that is being done on a confidential basis with people who are affected."

Rowlands said plans would be put in place to limit blight on property. "Buying up property along the potential route is just one of the options. There is technology to reduce the visual impact and noise and vibration," he said. "You can channel noise away from people and upwards and outwards. We believe we can do a really good job somewhere sensitive like the Chilterns. People worry more than perhaps they need to do and fear the impacts wider than they need to be."

He said that some details had not yet been agreed, including how the line would serve Heathrow, as required by the government. Arup, the engineering group, has proposed a £10bn, 12-platform station at the airport but there is industry speculation that High Speed Two is considering a scaled-down presence at Heathrow. "There are different things you can do in relation to something called Heathrow depending on how much you want to spend and what the benefits are."

Rowlands said the line was likely to run into city centres. "All of the advice from those that already have high-speed networks is you go to city centres. It is difficult to see in terms of flows from central London to central Birmingham why people would find it attractive to be dropped off at a non-city centre solution."

High Speed Two will also give the government broad plans for routes north of Birmingham to Manchester and beyond, but will not propose a definitive north-south route. Rowlands said these would not be made public.

"Beyond the West Midlands there are different ways of joining up different cities. What we want to give the government is a box of Meccano pieces so you can see all the potential legs to allow government to assemble in a sensible fashion what kind of route going north it would like."

Cross-party support for a high-speed network has seen 10 UK cities including Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham sign up to a lobby group demanding that a route passes through their conurbations.

Rowlands said the line could follow a range of routes, with the "Meccano" approach allowing future governments to pick and choose how they extend the line. "There is the reverse S that goes through the Pennines, the inverted A that goes up both sides of the Pennines; there is the Y that goes up to Carstairs and splits for Edinburgh and Glasgow.

"We are not going to give the government a defined proposition and at that level it is strategic corridors that are within a couple of hundred metres of where they are likely to be."

But he said continuing further north was essential to the scheme's viability. "It doesn't make much sense just going to the West Midlands, and indeed it may be that the case for [the line] is dependent on building a larger network."

I cannot help feeling that the UK has missed a golden opportunity to improve the public transport network of the UK. Hundreds of billions of pounds have been borrowed from International markets and handed it over to the banks who are in the most part sitting on it to improve their balance sheets.

Surely if some of that money had been credited to the railways and other surface transport networks, it would have not only improved the public transport system in the UK but would have provided hundreds of thousands of jobs. Think of all the extra tax that would have been gained over and above the returns on the money itself. I have just demonstrated why I was not an economist!

Letters

Rail plans need a funding pledge

* The Guardian, Saturday 8 August 2009

I'm delighted that high-speed rail is now high on the political agenda (High-speed rail plans take Tory victory into account, 7 August). The Liberal Democrats were the first political party to call for a high-speed rail network and we're very pleased that the other two major parties have come on board. The real question is who is committed to paying for it. Unlike Labour and the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats have spelled out exactly how we would pay for it – through a per-mile charge on road haulage. Without this financial commitment, especially in today's economic climate, the other party's pledges aren't worth the paper they're written on.

Incidentally, if I were a betting man, I wouldn't be putting much money on a Tory victory. The indications are that a hung parliament is likely and that makes the Lib Dem commitment to high-speed rail even more important.

Norman Baker MP

Lib Dem, Lewes

• Your delightful wide angle shot of the rolling Chiltern Hills (The view in Buckinghamshire, 7 August) very effectively makes the point that railways don't need to wreck the countryside. A twin-track railway in fact runs right across your picture, but is completely hidden from view.

It is also worth noting that the civil engineers for the Great Central and Great Western Railways often acquired land sufficient to allow for future additional tracks. There was clearly some vision in the plans of the 19th and 2oth century. It is just a pity that we are only now talking of a railway plan for the 21st century, when everybody else did it last century.

Neil Dury

Haddenham, Buckinghamshire