HS2 cost skyrockets.

[miasmum]

What annoys me with train fares is, I live equi-distance between London and Birmingham. Both take just over the hour. Cheap day return to London £33.00 Cheap day return to Birmingham £16.00 Why???? Same trains, same tracks, same time?

[Suff]

Prey, do tell, what is so banana republic about having the UKs major cities all connected to each other by a fast railway system. Inter-City 125 anyone?Especially when all of the direct A to B routes are under 200 miles, and well under 150 miles in a lot of cases.

Thank you so much for proving my point. London to Edinburgh is 400 miles. If the English leg is not done, then neither can the Scottish leg be done.

Pray tell, do, how long the Belgian and Dutch legs are?

The LGV on the east coast of France was only to Tours, less than 200 miles. The links to Brussels Lille and other Northern cities are also under 200 miles in France. The Bordeaux link has finally been done after 40 years. Lyon was not fully connected in the first instance and Strasbourg only connected LGV in the last decade.

None of these would have happened if Paris had not had the initial LGV interconnects.

Go for it, stop progress. It just means that people will continue to fly in the UK instead of taking trains running on renewable energy. Excellent, just what we need for our future generations.

If you want to progress, you have to pay the price.

Local links are not stalling for lack of incentive, they are stalling due to a lack of integrated infrastructure and because people find it both cheaper and easier to use their cars. The latter being the bigger issue.

[Workingman]

Edinburgh - London is 330 miles / 530k

You then compare a continent to an island.

And you also compare a country twice the physical size of the UK and whose populations centres are spread N.S.E.&W. Paris is the hub and all the places mentioned are at the end of the spokes, but try getting from the end of one spoke to another without going through the hub.

The UK is not laid out like that. All of its major cities lie on a shallow westward curving arc from London to Edinburgh. In comparison to the major cities of France, Germany or Spain there is no distance between them.

Nobody is campaigning for slower or uncomfortable trains, but t what we would like is more and affordable trains many more of us could use and serving all parts of the country. Rocket science it is not.

[cromwell]

What annoys me with train fares is, I live equi-distance between London and Birmingham. Both take just over the hour. Cheap day return to London £33.00 Cheap day return to Birmingham £16.00 Why???? Same trains, same tracks, same time?

Market forces? If more people need to go to London than to Birmingham they can charge more for the London trip and people will have to pay it?

[Suff]

Edinburgh - London is 330 miles / 530k
Nobody is campaigning for slower or uncomfortable trains, but t what we would like is more and affordable trains many more of us could use and serving all parts of the country. Rocket science it is not.

Yeah, well tell that to the Dutch and the Belgians. Both of whom have countries much smaller than the UK and both of whom have high speed rail services.

The point is not that we need better rolling stock, some TGV stock is really crap. We need the high speed lines. That is what HS2 is all about.

BTW Edinburgh may be 330 miles if you draw a line on a map or fly in the air, but if you go via the ground it is 400 miles no matter how you do it. There are no straight lines on the map and there is a mountain range down the spine of the country.

HS2 is not about how crappy our current services are. HS2 is about the foundation for a totally modern high speed rail hub throughout the country. If we don't even try we will never have one. We'll just keep on with our outdated and sadly lacking infrastructure until nobody ever wants to use a train again.

[Suff]

Market forces? If more people need to go to London than to Birmingham they can charge more for the London trip and people will have to pay it?

You think this is just London? There is a current ongoing investigation into why the East coast rail service through FIFE to Edinburgh costs more than twice the equivalent journey from the west and Glasgow way.

They're all at it. People need to get to work and so they are punished for it with higher prices. If you dig into the situation, there are many routes from the west, by car, into Edinburgh. From FIFE there is ONE. Over the bridge and into the morass of the eastern feeder routes into Edinburgh. Market forces says if you don't like sitting in traffic for an hour you can take the train for more than twice as much as the person who does not need to sit in traffic for an hour.

[TheOstrich]

If you dig into the situation, there are many routes from the west, by car, into Edinburgh. From FIFE there is ONE. Over the bridge and into the morass of the eastern feeder routes into Edinburgh. Market forces says if you don't like sitting in traffic for an hour you can take the train for more than twice as much as the person who does not need to sit in traffic for an hour.

That is a very interesting observation, Suff. Is that road bridge a toll?

[Suff]

That is a very interesting observation, Suff. Is that road bridge a toll?

It used to be Ossie, but one of the first things the devolved parliament did was to remove the tolls on Scottish bridges.

Really this is about the price of rail vs the time and hassle of being stuck trying to get into Edinburgh from the North. I've spent more than enough years doing it, so I know the issue.