Government unveils high-speed rail plan to ground short flights

(I-Newswire) August 12, 2009 - The termination of domestic air travel has become an explicit policy target for the first time by aiming to replace short-haul flights with a new 250mph high-speed rail network.

Russell Lerman from Envido comments that a switch to using rail services would lead to switching 46 million domestic air passengers a year to a multibillion-pound north-south rail line was "manifestly in the public interest". The need of a high-speed network becomes more apparent.

Marking a government shift against aviation, rail journeys should be preferred to plane trips. Plans for a new generation of ultra-fast train services are well advanced and include:

•A new route from London to Birmingham, including the framework to extend the line northward to Scotland, to be published by the end of the year.
•A line to the West Midlands built by 2020 thanks to building cross-party support for the network.
•The introduction of high-speed trains on the existing network, which would reduce journey times from London to Scotland to three and a half hours.
•A new line London-to-Birmingham thanks to a public-private partnership that would provide a funding of £7bn.


High-speed trains will be replacing the popular short-haul flights

The Government has declared that domestic and European flights to and from the UK, which carry 169 million passengers on 1.9m trips a year, should be "progressively replaced" by a high-speed rail network that will relieve congestion on existing lines and shorten train journey times across the UK.

Further-flung destinations are still expected to be dominated by air travel. However, flights to north-west Europe are the most realistic target considering that at the moment short-haul flights are the most popular journey in British aviation, accounting for 7 out of 10 flights. Train travel is also popular in the UK, as the British public already make 1.3bn passenger rail journeys each year. The UK need to have a high-speed rail system that links our major conurbations and makes them far more accessible to Europe.


Diversity of comments on the government intentions.

The reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 planned by the government is prompting the latter to push the use of electric cars and more investment in cycle routes red and rail taking priority over air travel, which will help to reduce energy costs.

Following these declarations, the British Air Transport Association (Bata), whose members include British Airways, Flybe and BMI, manifested last night that the government would not be able to eliminate flights within the UK altogether. Roger Wiltshire, Bata secretary general, said there were still flights from the UK to Paris and Brussels despite the high-speed Eurostar service.

Campaigners, instead, have welcomed the government intentions of promoting direct rail alternative for short distances, marking a major shift away from previous government policy. However, they persist asking for a revision of its decisions on Heathrow. According to government estimates, air passenger numbers will nearly double to 465 million a year by 2030 and, therefore, the new declarations would not undermine an aviation policy that calls for new runways at Stansted and Heathrow over the next decade.

The potential of the last declarations made by the government are its intention of making it a national priority, which would make it affordable and allow a real cutting of carbon emissions.

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info@envido.co.uk

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