Should the UK have TGV routes?

Question

"train de grande vitesse" - High speed trains, like the French have?

Would the privatised railway fund it, or do other countries have it because they are in public ownership?

Answer 1

I think high speed rail will eventually be built, at least on some of the long distance routes.

With England's population density, it is inevitable.

Air travel is proving more more inefficient and expensive, and very polluting, especially for short to intermediate trips and that is exactly where rail travel excels.

The problem is, even though the common people realize the need for improved rail service, our elected officials, (U.K and U.S. both) are not the type of people you see with the average people riding the trains, they fly or are driven to theri destinations.

we need to let our elected populace know in no uncertain terms we deserve better passenger rail systems, only then can it happen.

Answer 2

Put it like this TGV is French and they would not be able to set up their own network in the UK unless they used the present rail infrastructure & they will not be able to take over the infrastructure unless it went through the EU & British Goverment.

DB Rail Company has bourght into a few UK TOC's (Train Operating Companies) who have kept their British names.

But back to the point: There are plans to build HS2 & 3 (High Speed 2 & 3), but it all boils down to the goverment as it has to pass through Parliment as a white paper. If the goverment are behind building High Speed Network then it will happen sooner rather than later. Hopefully they will act sooner.

Answer 3

In the good old days of British Rail  BR. engineers had a plan to do just that,  they even built there own tilting train there was one or two minor problems with it but nothing they could not sort out. BR. sent there proposals to the government it was to cost £300 million back then [early eighties]  it would link all the UK. cities with a high speed rail link but Maggie Thatcher was in power and she rejected it preferring instead to give tens of billions to private companies to run the railways and the fragmented mess we have now

Answer 4

Go SAM go - couldn't agree more! Thank you maggie thatcher, john major, and good old dr beeching.............winkers, the lot of em!

Answer 5

I don't think we have the space for it.

If you live anywhere near a TGV line it sounds like a jumbo jet going past.

Answer 6

Now lets see, how long has it taken for High Speed 1 the Chunnel link to become reality in Kent?? almost 20 years and that is for a very short stretch of track, cost was in the billion mark and still restricted to only just over 120mph on the line.

Quite frankly it is a non starter.

Sorry.

Answer 7

Mate, the SNCF infrastructure dates from 1945 (after being destroyed by the RAF in ww2). Ours is Victorian and the oldest in the world.

We havent a hope in h**l of a TGV this side of Calais.

Answer 8

Whilst we don't have services as fast as those of the TGV, we have services on 'classic' routes that now run regularly at average speeds of in excess of 100 miles an hour, where you can just 'turn up and go'. Even in 1975, when I started to travel regularly between London and Newcastle, the journey time behind a Deltic was 5 hours - HSTs and later electrification got that down to 3 hours. Similarly, with routes to Wales and the West Country using HSTs. Speeds on cross-country services increased out of all recognition with the introduction of Voyagers and Super Voyagers, with regular interval services on routes that had perhaps only a couple of trains a day (eg North East to South West). Speeds on the west coast route to Lancashire and Scotland increased with Pendolinos, and are due to increase even more when the route upgrade is finished...

So, please don't listen to the half baked prejudices of most of the previous answers which talk without regard to the facts. Beeching had nothing at all to do with whether or not we have 'TGV' services - the most short sighted decision of his term of office was to close the ex-Great Central line, built to Eiropean loading gauge, and brilliantly engineered which could have provided even faster services than we now have bewtween London, the Midlands and North. It. of course, didn't help that he also closed other 'secondary' diversionary routes which now result in much conflict between the needs of passengers and the needs of freight operators. Thatcher? she didn't have much influence, other that to stop development of the APT (which probably would have happened anyway) and to stifle investment for a period. Major? Well, the dog's dinner that was privatisation was clearly his fault - trying to push it through without proper thought before an inevitable change of Government and seperating 'steel from wheel' and making mega bucks for Tory boys in the city by constant franchise changes, complicated rolling stock leasing arrangements etc. But reflect on what would have happened had it not happened. Labour would have come to power and probably not privatised. However, George Brown as then Chancellor would have not allowed much investment. I would hazard no Pendolinos, no Voyagers, much of the Southern crawling along with slam door stock. Instead, for all its imperfections we have a railway system now carrying more passengers than at any time  since 1947 on a system a third of the size, at speeds 3 times as high as achieved then.

It's so easy to give glib answers without thinking things through.

Answer 9

I enjoy travel not being sped A-B in the shortest  possiable time its bad enough not have real stopping train on main lines now ..I would love to travel Peterbro, to Glasgow in a 156 and the more stops the better