High-speed rail must be for the people

[John Hunt]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle6040940.ece

[John H-T]

We need a major change in mind set. The Tax payer needs to be aware of the real cost of road transport in terms of up keep, new roads, delays, accidents, polution etc. There is an urgent need to get us out of our cars and frieght off the road. The question is how to do it. Whatever we do there is a cost and a lot of the costs of road transport are never really calculated.

The costs of building High Speed 2 are there for everyone to see so they can be shot at and complained about! I would much prefer to travel by rail but it has got to be at a reasonable cost and I need a reasonable transport system at the other end. So how do we do it?!

[Pesmo]

I am one of those whom provided the cost of the new infrastructure is not too excessive doesn't really worry what it costs. These are investments for 100 plus years and not just a couple of decades like most capital projects and they should be paid for over that period.

Such is the life of a railway that now we don't care now whether it cost £100 a mile or £400 a mile in 1850 as its utility 160 years later is so great that the construction cost from then is almost irrelevent. Future generations will think the same of our costs regardless of what they are.

[klordger1900]

By the time they get this supposed line ready for action who knows what criteria are going to be heading the latest do-gooders charters? Carbon footprints may make trips over long distances in high speed trains the reserve of those with genuine commercial/political needs which would overshadow those wishing to photograph and generally record trains for a hobby! But Eurostar do offer business and leisure seating in their enormously long trains so there is reason to suppose that different styles of seating will attract vastly different price tags.