High Speed Rail: Tories and Greenpeace are right

Theresa Villainous is absolutely correct to call for the cost of a third runway in Heathrow to be ploughed into a new high speed rail link between St Pancras, Manchester and Leeds. But Greenpeace are even more correct to say this:

“The true test of their commitment will come when, like the Liberal Democrats, this position is written into their manifesto.”

That’s cheers all round then.

3 comments

  1. read the same story, and thought why does it not go to Edinburgh/Glasgow. Its enough of a distance to make it just competitive against air travel even today. Not unless the Tories are giving up on Scotland altogether?

    Also, ‘railways’? How 20th century. It wold be right that the UK gets this type of technology 50 years late while other nations begin the shift to mag-lev. Why not jump a generation and get in on the cutting edge?

  2. Except I don’t think building high-speed rail links was in our last manifesto (certainly not explicit).

    It certainly isn’t in our next one yet (see oft repeated comments on MiH)

    Bit of sting in the Tory tail:
    “A Conservative government would spend £15.6bn over 12 years on the project, which they say could be met from within current levels of government capital spend on rail.”

    So what happens the the other improvements – we get a shiny high speed link at the price of reduced investment elsewhere on the network.

  3. Evil European: You may have a point about mag-lev – I have no idea. But one stumbling block would be that part of the point is to integrate the service with Eurostar.

    In terms of Scotland – also good point. But that would have to be negotiated with the Scottish Executive.

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