CATCHING UP TO THE TRAIN:

On the fast track to the easyTrain future:: Engineering ingenuity is forging a new era of high-speed travel. Commercial nous can make it available to everyone (Andrew Adonis, 12/30/09, Times of London)

It’s a brave politician who predicts what 2010 holds in store, but I am confident that for Britain it will be the year of high-speed rail.

Over the past 30 years most of Europe and much of Asia have embraced high-speed rail as their modern 21st-century backbone transport infrastructure. Europe now has 3,600 miles of high-speed line in operation, with 2,000 more under construction. China will have 6,000 miles open by 2012, including all 800 miles of the new Beijing-Shanghai line.

Despite our proud railway heritage, Britain is a high-speed laggard. [...]

High-speed rail provides connections that are not only fast and convenient — city centre to city centre — but also high-capacity and more environmentally sustainable than either motorways or aviation for large numbers of passengers.

This aspiration is now on course to become reality. Today I receive a full report from High Speed Two (HS2), the company set up a year ago to advise the Government on the development of high-speed rail services between London and Scotland.

The report is among the most thorough transport infrastructure plans prepared in Britain. It presents a detailed route for the first stage of a North-South high-speed line from London to the West Midlands and options for extending high-speed services and lines to destinations farther north, including the North West, the East Midlands, Yorkshire, the North East and Scotland.