So now we have a high speed train that cost £6bn (or £1bn per 10 miles)?

Question

This will knock 20 minutes off the travelling time between London and Paris. Is this a good deal for the country as a whole or of benefit only to those living in the South of England?

Would this money have been better spent on improving the safety of the railways we already have? Does this benefit Scotland and the North of England?

Answer 1

You are surely talking about The Eurostar. The train, and all the fixtures, including the way the rails base and power supply are build, belong to France. Only the bridges and side tracks belong to GB. As to whom it benefits, That is the question !

Generally speaking, in a country who saw the very first running locomotive on rails, I must say that the railways are atrocious. You are perfectly right to ask why the money paid to buy that fast train was not used for safety and improvement of the over ageing British system.

Answer 2

It's a private venture by a private company. It will ultimately be paid for by Eurostar customers, not tax payers. On that basis they are free to spend their money developing their service anywhere they want.

Answer 3

seeing as it took 9 years to build a bit of track that makes london 20 minutes closer to paris............. could think of a few things the money could of been better spent on

Answer 4

It's ridiculous, they could have got the trains to leave 20 minutes earlier. lol

Answer 5

Building new railroad routes in the urban core is expensive.  That's why maglev's are such a bad idea (they can't borrow existing lines).  

Though I can hardly argue with improving British railroad safety.   Just come over here and steal our tricks... our passenger are built to survive collisions with these mighty beasts

http://westernrailroads.com/Engine%20Typ...  

so they gotta be tough.

Anyway you have no cause to complain about the cost unless your taxes paid for it AND people in the south of England don't pay for your rail improvements.

Answer 6

It will do neither.

The amount of people that use Eurostar compared to EuroTunnel, Air Travel and Ferry is not that great.

Also as the Train will not stop anywhere but St Pancras then it will possibly benefit more people in the North as direct links are now aimed at the Midlands and North rather than the South East

Answer 7

Ir is likely to cut down on the amount of air travel as timing city centre to city centre will be quicker than by plane, so that is one good thing. It is a great pity that the proposed 'north of London' services never came to anything - we now really need the high speed line from London to the north which has been mooted in several quarters (it was short sighted that the Great Central main line north of London was closed in the Beeching years as that was designed as long ago as thew 1890s to provide a link to  channel tunnel). Out railways are pretty safe compared with other forms of transport. A railway accident which takes place rarely gets top headlines - the mdia forget the 100s that are killed on our roads each week.