Good to see the government is so keen to
waste invest such large sums of money in Victorian technology. Conventional railways are expensive to maintain and this is reflected in the cost of fares.
This should have been built using magnetic levitation trains. They can go much faster where there is no physical contact with the ground. They are much quieter as you don't get the low frequency ground rumble that travels long distances. If you are going to try to compete with aircraft then you need to be approaching aircraft speeds! But I think all high speed travel will be a thing of the past by the time this opens due to CO2 emission levies. The faster something goes the energy used goes up by a square law. It will be too expensive to go anywhere at more than 10mph.
In the 1950's we were in the forefront is so many ground breaking technologies. Now the all the Governments seem to want to be in the forefront for, is useless green technologies, PC correctness and many other socially worthless projects.
Ten years ago I had to regularly fly to Paris for work meetings, so I used to aim to get a flight for about 7am arrive Paris with the time difference at about 9pm and be at the company for about 9:30. That was the theory. Now Paris and Charles deGaulle airport suffer fog problems in the spring and autumn. This would cause flight delays, but where Heathrow airport runways run at near to 100% capacity, it was quite normal to be stuck sitting on the aircraft for up to 4 hours, just waiting for takeoff slot. I have also had similar delay experiences at Gatwick.
I must admit if I was looking to setup a business which involved much flying to be successful, I wouldn't set it up in the UK. Ireland or the Netherlands would make more sense to me.
A white elephant railway line does not solve these problems.
The reason train journeys now take much longer than they used to is due to late train penalties, levied by the Government. The train companies have massively extended journey times, so if a train is running late, it can catch up, so at journeys end there is a much bigger chance it is within the no late penalty timing. I saw a newspaper article on this in The Daily Telegraph about 5 years ago. Where they compared many current journey times over the years and proved many were much faster during Victorian times, got faster as train technology improved and have now gone backwards. Typical Government law of unintended consequences.
But back to Merkosy it's said that The French - German friendship is the engine of EU, wouldn't it work better if they were French - German - British triumvirate? Or is it a silly question?
