Tansport Secretary hails 2010 ‘year of high-speed rail in the UK’

Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has said that 2010 will be the year of “year of high-speed rail in the UK”, according to BBC News.

Lord Adonis’s words come as plans are announced for a new 250mph line linking London and the West Midlands, and proposals for routes further north.

Lord Adonis said: “I want Britain to be a pioneer in low-cost, mass-market high-speed rail. I want to see not just ‘Easyjet’ but ‘Easytrain’ – high-speed trains with airline-style pricing and mass market appeal so that HSR is for all and not just the wealthy.”

I wonder when Lord Adonis last got on a train. I wonder if 2010 will be a year of high speed rail for commuters stood like sardines on Clapham station on a dark January evening. And Lord Adonis will more than likely retire to the Lords opposition benches after the next General Election in any case.

As I have often written before, Britain has been left far behind in rail transport, indeed in other types of public transport too. For Lord Adonis to want Britain to become a pioneer is admirable but rather late. Practically every country in Europe runs cheaper, more frequent and faster trains than Britain.

To hope that it might be affordable for all is pie in the sky. The project will be handed over to a private company, who will be answerable to shareholders and will have dividends to protect. Has nothing been learnt of the folly of privatising rail and bus transport? Companies that have no accountability always revert to type and put profit before people. The reason they are so behind is because they have been neglected, once our rail network was the envy of the world. But we have lost that ‘can-do’ spirit of British engineering. Now in its place the Governments new policy is to throw money at problems, appoint a new manager or form a new quango.

New lines, trains and schemes are positive, but glossy new flagship projects do not make up for the dire inadequacies elsewhere. A shiny new proposals for a line from London to Birmingham does not benefit be in Portsmouth. Why not sort out the problems with the networks that we already have?

(Just a final though…. if Lord Adonis goes on holiday and comes back tanned, does that make him a bronzed Adonis?)