Why doesn't Britain have high speed trains?

Question

I've just got back from Germany and i went on an ICE train and it was brilliant and having done a little research we seem to be the only country without a proper high-speed rail network (although I don't think the US has one?). Plus all the trains arrive on time in Germany apparently (kind of predictable). I don't know much about the rail network or the “benefits” of privatisation but it seems to me that we have a c**p network compared with Europe - even the French can do it for god sake.

Is it just down to cost or are there other factors i.e. no demand for it.

Answer 1

because we have s**t rails & thay dont wont 2 spend money on then thay just wont 2 make the money

Answer 2

Probably because safety campaingers would say it's dangerous

Answer 3

Following the successful opening of the first phase of High Speed 1 in 2003 there has been much debate in the British national media and specialist rail circles on the merits of constructing further high-speed rail routes in the United Kingdom. The international definition of high-speed rail for new lines is those with a speed of at least 155 mph (250 km/h) and for existing lines those with a speed of around 124 mph (200 km/h).

The fastest current UK domestic services operate at 125mph (201km/h) on the West Coast Main Line (WCML), East Coast Main Line (ECML) and Great Western Main Line. Attempts to increase these speeds to 140mph (225km/h) on both the WCML and ECML have failed for various reasons, principally because speeds over 125 mph (201km/h) require in-cab signalling. (See the lines' respective articles for further details). However, trains capable of 140 mph (225km/h) will be introduced on domestic services between London and Kent along the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) in 2009 - although this is technically not high speed rail by the accepted definition described above.

Perhaps because of the continuing growth of high-speed services across continental Europe and the frustrations encountered by domestic rail projects in the UK, there has been a growing movement within industry and latterly government circles for the inclusion of a new North-South line in transport policy.

Answer 4

We do have a high speed link from St Pancras to Folkestone. Just remember how long it took to build and how many protests were raised. There are 2 problems: our network is generally old and congested with expresses, stopping trains, goods trains and maintenance work; Our country is congested and nobody wants a railway line building thru their district or is willing to pay for it

Answer 5

good question... i always wondered that.... *ponders about this*

Answer 6

Actually we do have one from St Pancreas to Folkstone. And we are about to buid an extra one from Dover to Kings Cross and Southeastern are going to run it. Im exited. =)

And don't be rude about england, americans, our rains are much mor reliable and frequent than your. You have barley got over steam rail yet.

Answer 7

I don't think Canada has one..

Answer 8

We do have high speed trains, the one i was on last week got up to 15mph.

Answer 9

There are lots of reasons!!!! Where would you like me to start?

I think I'll start at the beginning!

1) we have the oldest railway network in the world, and for us to build new railway lines it has to go throu parliment as a white paper just to get permission to build. Take a look at the Thameslink 2000 Project, that should have been built by the year 2000, but John Prescott & his department refused to sign the white paper, but within 2 months of Prescott standing down the paper was signed & now the project has started.

2) France & Germany have differant laws which mean that the goverment were able to take over the land very quickly and built their new lines in a matter of years.

3)Now that our railway system is in Private Hands people do not want to put their companies money where their mouths are, so they are quick to moan about the condition of the British railway Network, but at the same time they do not want to invest as it will have a knock on affect on the companies shares.(even though if they had looked at it as a long term investment they would inprove their companies profile so raising the value of their shares.)

4) Plain simple Cost of such project...Even though companies like Network Rail are lobbying the goverment for HS2.

5) Both France & Germany had land that was available to be built over and converted into a railway. While here in Britian there is no free land for us to develope into railway infrastructure.

6) When building the new High Speed Lines there would be major disruption to the other parts of the rail network....Look at how its reported when ther is one section that has a signal failour and there was 40 other project in the UK that took place and was completed without any problems...the press reports on the bad issue but not the 40 other project which were suscessful.

Answer 10

The railtrack  gauge is too narrow compared to continental track which is wider more stable for the train thus higher speeds.

Answer 11

Give us Chance !!

We can't get the slow ones to run properly let alone HST!!!

Answer 12

This country is behind the times. No foresight, no vision, and as they can't run a decent network anyway, how on earth would they be able to run a highspeed one. Anyway, the government isn't interested in running a service for the people, they're interested in gettingas much money out of us poor suckers as they can. While people are still paying for the c**p trains we have now, they won't think there's a need to improve.

Answer 13

We don't have high speed rail or road transport in Britain as we never won the war, cause we and the yanks bombed the sh**e out of Europe they had to rebuild an modernise, and the build with the future in mind.

Answer 14

why they would never run on time anyway

Answer 15

Underinvestment. The railways were starved of funds during the period of nationalisation (1948 - 1993) and are being starved of funds now. The fares are higher than anywhere else in Europe including countries like France and Germany which as you say have better rail networks.

There is so far one high speed (200mph) route in Britain and that is the one taken by Eurostar from St Pancras International on its way to the Chunnel.

Some of the Train Operating Companies e.g. Virgin have trains capable of more than the current 125mph limit on the present system, but the network hasn't been upgraded to allow them to travel at higher speeds. When  it will be is anybody's guess.

Answer 16

Because Uk's technology is not good enough.

Answer 17

WE DO HAVE A HIGH SPEED LINE, in sort...

The only High Speed line we have in the UK is from the Eurostar sercices. Trains goes up to 186mph/h or 300km/h

Eurostar trains run from London to Paris in 02h15min

London to Brussels in 01h51min.

The completed High speed line with fare paying passenger opened on the 14 of November 2007.

Eurostar trains run from London St Pancras International.

For more info see:

www.eurostar.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_...

Answer 18

dude y r u thinking about that anyway it might be a financial thing n also don't think that britain needs one

Answer 19

Cost's! you seen the state of the railways the now?

Answer 20

because the govt would rather spend money on something that the UK doesent need!!

Answer 21

There is a high chance of the being delayed or cancelled....

Answer 22

Where are we going to get the routes from?

a) stop all rail travel to upgrade existing tracks, not good

b) purchase new land to build new routes, planning laws

c) get the money, not from a British government

Answer 23

fuel to dear to run them

Answer 24

Britain's Inter City services do travel at speeds of up to 125 m.p.h. as opposed to the 186 mph of French TGVs and German ICEs. British governments have never invested money on the scale of those European countries with higher speed networks, but I don't think our network is "c**p" at all. Firstly the British railway network is one of the densest of any country except perhaps the Netherlands, with many rural lines as well as commuter and Inter City main lines. Our services also tend to be very high frequency compared with most countries. Manchester to London every half hour in 2 hours

10 minutes isn't bad at all when you think that most airlines ask you to check in two hours before their flights; there are 6 trains per hour between Brighton and London, 3 trains per hour between Leicester and London; many of our railway lines are running at urban metro type frequencies. If you take a close look at the French railway system off the brilliant TGV network, you'll see closed rural lines and services between

various provincial cities running at 3 to 4 hour frequencies where the equivalent services in the U.K. run every 30 minutes. The questioner states that all the trains arrive on time in Germany; well of course they don't but they are a few percentage points above our 90% national average punctuality rate. We do need some higher speed main lines

and more investment in our rail system through longer franchises, but as someone who several times per week, uses and depends on it to get me all over the U.K. I'm broadly satisfied; most of my journeys are punctual and I am able to get to some very rural and out of the way places by train too.

Answer 25

There is demand for trains here there are many commuters but what with places getting blown up and such, plus i think it is a money issue, we have the virgin train which is pretty quick and is kinda freaky as it tilts round corners so it doesnt have to slow down for them, our train services are terrible at times, but i think there have been improvements made we are just behind other countries.

Answer 26

It depends what you mean by 'high speed'. It is true that we have no dedicated lines as they do in France, Germany, Spain and Japan, but we have regular services that run at averages of around 100mph, hour in, hour out, day in, day out throughout the year. I can remember, as an example, that not so long ago it took 5 hours to travel from London to Newcastle - now we have services every 30 minutes, some doing the journey in as little as 2hrs 40. Similar step changes in speeds have been seen on most major routes in the last 20 years with the introduction of HSTs and, InterCity225a, Pendolinos and Voyagers. It's very easy to make smart aleck comments to gain points as most of the answers do - but I guess that most of those are by people who rarely, if ever, travel by train and just like to parrot received 'wisdom' (aka media rubbish)

Answer 27

cos were lazy battys

Answer 28

They haven't got the hang of not crashing the slow ones yet!

Answer 29

The other factor is utter incompetence on the part of successive governments over the last thirty years, and 'short-term-ism', so nothing is ever planned and followed through.

Answer 30

I think the 125 is just doing fine for us, with so many stops in our rail lines why we need a high speed train to stop every 20 Minuit?

Answer 31

The reason why Britain has only one high speed rail link - EuroStar, is historic.  Here in UK the first railways were built with private money.  

In ordr to make the Victorian Railways in UK more profitable, the owners took their tracks around often winding courses.  The reason being was to allow for trains to stop at every village, hamlet and halt along the route from there to here etc.

Some wealthy folk, Barons mostly, insisted that the Railway divert to stop at a halt on their own estate.

Okay - let's go Continental - in France the railway network is owned and operated by the state.  So that when the French came to build their railways they drew a straight line from point A to point B and that's where the track was laid.

A similar situation occured in Germany - state owned railways.

The railways here in UK were only nationalised in c1947 but were then sold off to the public sector in c1990-something or other.

I know it's a c**p network but we're stick with it.  Back in the 1960-s the then Labour UK-gov invested heavily in a new tilting train which they believed would make it possible for trains to his high speeds even on bendy tracks.

Even our major railway stations are often curved.  Here's the Flying Scotsman coming into York Station - notice the curve: -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE7NDXIyf...

Here's the fastest steam locomotive ever - Mallard - she could do about 108 mph : -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d_iImdtg...

EURO-STAR 208MPH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCvtXdeAz...

EURO-STAR in KENT - looks like a snail - just about matches speed with the vehicles on the road next to the train : -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqHplTnev...

NOT IMPRESSED - I'm going on that d**n thing in late June this year.  A couple of days ago one of the EuroStar snails took ten (10) hours to reach Paris - by which time the onboard bard had completely run out of booze.

Now here's a locomotive which is impressive : -

UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY

BIG-BOY LOCOMOTIVES : -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8f9VFlNy...

AWESOME. . . . .