The UK's imminent general election campaign will, as 'E-day' approaches and even more muck starts to fly, inevitably home in on personalities and the economy. So we should make the most of issues that have found their way, probably fleetingly, into the slanging match that now marks out the 'phoney election'. For example, given that the UK's railway system still owes much to its origins in the 19th century, it is interesting that trains can still be a political battleground in the 21st century.
Most publicly, the main parties are arguing about the best new route for HS2, a north-bound high speed railway line from London. Should HS2 be a part of a more radical rethink of the country's transport network, finally connecting the UK's largest airport, Heathrow, to the rest of the country by rail? The Bow Group, a Conservative 'think tank', clearly thinks so. In its report "The Right Track – Delivering the Conservatives' Vision for High Speed Rail", it says that any new high speed link "should be directly linked to Heathrow Airport through the construction of a Heathrow hub interchange station".
A more neutral source, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said last year that that HS2 would deliver benefits to the UK of "almost £55 billion". Network Rail says that HS2 could cost £34 billion. More recently, the BCC has said that the London Crossrail link would yield benefits of £36 bn for a spending of £15.9bn, while Thameslink, which I wrote about previously, was the subject of a Parliamentary debate this month, as reported in E&T.
Today's arguments about rail travel take place in a world that is very different from when trains were last an election issue at the national level. That was probably back in the 1960s, when Lord Beeching was wielding his axe to Britain's rail network and before air travel became second nature to most people.
As in other countries, debates about the railways are a proxy for arguing about climate change. Politicians may find it hard to debate global warming in its own right – too much complicated science – so they vie to outdo one another with positive statements on nice green technologies like trains.
The train industry has clearly decided that it makes sense to hitch itself to the environment boom. Bombardier Transportation, for example, which not only makes trains but something it dubs awkwardly "Rail Control Solutions" (which probably means signalling systems), has set up a website that sells the message and provides links to external sites that support its arguments. The site's title, The Climate is Right for Trains, says it all.
The world seems to be listening to the arguments. China is laying rail tracks apace. Late last year, CNN reports in a link that shows up on the Bombardier site, China opened a line between the cities of Wuhan and Guangzhou that "cuts travel time from over 10 hours to within three", suggesting that the airlines might find this a threat.
Even the USA, previously less than keen on rail travel, wants to build a network of high-speed rail corridors. President Barack Obama last month renewed last year's commitment to use some of the money intended to revive the country's economy on rail projects, although the $8 billion he proposed isn't a lot by railway standards.
The two main parties were never going to agree on a rail policy, even though both have pursued effectively the same policy on rail since the privatisation of the 1990s. So there will be no bi-partisan agreement on the route for HS2. But, for the first time in many elections, at least the issue is alive. Whether the winner of the election follows up on its promises is another matter.
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