Comments on: High speed rail: How the UK and Australia can learn from Spain

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:09:35 +0000

Hi David. I agree, but we’re 25-30 years behind? We’re already about 40 years behind the French. Bordeaux to Paris is just a bit shorter than London to Glasgow and you can do it in just over two hours and they’re currently working to reduce that even further. Try getting from London to Glasgow in anything less than four hours.

I can’t see it happening in the UK unfortunately. It should have been done years ago, there’s just too much in the way now..

By: Tim Richards

Tim Richards — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:46:09 +0000

Totally agree re the need for a high-speed train between Sydney & Melbourne, which is often referenced as one of the top ten busiest air corridors in the world.

The high-speed proposal that was much discussed and then discarded in the 1980s would have run Melb-Canberra 2 hours, then Can-Syd 1 hour. When you factor in all the time and hassle going to/from airports, that would easily have made it a preferred option over the 1.5 hour flight between the two cities.

Hopefully it will come one day!

By: Keith

Keith — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:40:37 +0000

If money were no object, I’d say rip the whole works up and start afresh. And, centre it on Birmingham, not London.

Australia had much the same problem we had … different companies building what they thought people who lived in their area wanted … exacerbated by the different gauges adopted by each state.