11 March 2010
Welcome for high-speed rail announcement
Transform Scotland [1] today (Thursday 11th) welcomed the UK Department for Transport's announcement on high-speed rail.
Paul Tetlaw, Chair of Transform Scotland, said:
"Scotland should be served by high-speed rail services and we believe that today's announcement of a high-speed line south of Birmingham brings that prospect closer. "
Transform Scotland believes that there needs to be a far greater understanding of the difference between 'high-speed rail' and 'high-speed lines'. Almost all discussion has so far focussed on the latter, ignoring the fact that most of the high-speed rail services in countries such as France and Germany run on the conventional rail network rather than solely on dedicated high-speed lines. [2]
Paul Tetlaw said:
"Across Europe, stretches of high speed line have been built to improve overall journey times but the trains run partly on these new lines and partly on conventional lines - which allows them to easily access city centres. So even a line only from London to Birmingham will help Scotland in that it may take 30 minutes off the overall journey time from Scotland to London.
"Another benefit to Scotland of a new line south of Birmingham is that it would free up capacity on the traditional lines and so may allow speeding up of existing Virgin Pendolino services. A problem at the moment is that the line is just too congested to allow consistent high speed running. The trains were built to travel at 140mph but currently only run at 125mph.
"High speed rail is about creating extra capacity on the rail network for significant modal shift from car and plane to train. We will need this as climate change targets start to bite and oil becomes more scarce and more expensive."
ENDS
Notes to Editors
[1] Transform Scotland is the national sustainable transport alliance, bringing together rail, bus and shipping operators, local authorities, national environment and conservation groups, businesses and local transport groups - see <http://www.transformscotland.org.uk/our-members.aspx> for details.
[2] We would draw attention to the German experience, and specifically to its InterCity Express (ICE) network. The ICE network delivers an outstanding passenger experience, and covers virtually all major population centres in Germany. Yet despite being nominally a high-speed network, only a fraction of the route network (perhaps 10%) is new-build, and much of the network retains a top speed of 100mph. (This is, in essence, not different from the operation of Britain's own High-Speed Trains (HSTs) - a.k.a. InterCity 125s - which operate from London to Edinburgh on the East Coast Main Line at speeds up to 125mph, and which may then run on to Aberdeen and Inverness at speeds of up to 100mph.) The lesson is that Germany has been able to deliver an exemplar high-speed rail network without the need for all route mileage to be constructed to current high-speed aspirations (e.g. 186mph+). We would contend that a uniformly high-quality rail service is of greater importance than line speed alone.
END OF NEWS RELEASE