High-Speed Rail
Debate between David Mowat and Kelvin Hopkins(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Kelvin Hopkins
High-speed networks work brilliantly in areas where there are long gaps between major conurbations—in Spain, France and so on. Britain is much more densely populated. There are many stops and more towns en route. As I have suggested, we need more investment in the conventional railways that we already have, so that we can get to those destinations more quickly. I am sure that we can easily raise the speeds to Leeds, and certainly to other areas, with a lot of investment.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
The point is often made that high-speed rail works better over longer routes. Would he concede that the Paris-Lille, Osaka-Tokyo and Cologne-Frankfurt routes are all about 120 km long, which is quite similar to the first part of high-speed rail that is planned?
Kelvin Hopkins
We would have to be prepared to spend that kind of money. I have been on the Cologne-Frankfurt route and it is fantastic. A third of it is in tunnels, which are vastly expensive. The Germans have decided to build that route and it is a wonderful line. We do not have the resources to build lines like that everywhere. Some high-speed routes do not go through much on the way; we almost invariably have significant towns en route that have to be served on the same line.
David Mowat
I was responding to the hon. Gentleman’s point that high-speed rail works only over vast distances. The examples I quoted are not vast distances; they are very similar to what is envisaged in the first part of high-speed rail.
Kelvin Hopkins
In the best of all possible worlds, it would be nice to have fast routes everywhere. However, we must consider the resources involved. The significant routes are where people would choose to travel by air, rather than by land; people would go by aeroplane from Madrid to Barcelona, for example. Routes become economical where large numbers of people want to travel between conurbations that are fairly widely spaced, there is not a great deal in between, and it is easier to get the high-speed track without too much cost.