Factsheets - No.15: High-speed Rail
Current high-speed rail lines in the UK
- Britain opened its first, and only, high-speed rail line in September 2003: Phase I of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link
- Commercial services running on this new fast line can now travel at186mph/300 kmh (the same as in France and Belgium), reducing their journey times by 20 minutes
- Phase 2 is now 60% complete and is due to open in 2007
- This will extend the high-speed line from the mouth of the channel tunnel right in to St Pancras in central London and will cut a further 15 minutes off journey times
- Britain is far behind other countries in Europe and Asia in developing any kind of high-speed rail network as previous evidence showed no case existed
- Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Japan all have invested significantly in high-speed rail
Effect on journey times
- Building a number of high-speed lines between major cities in the UK would mean faster inter-urban travel for rail passengers
- For example:
| Current Journey Time | Potential Journey Time with HSR |
|---|
| London - Birmingham |
1 hr 35 min |
0 hr 55 min |
| London - Manchester |
2 hr 40 min |
1 hr 20 min |
| London - Leeds |
2 hr 05 min |
1 hr 25 min |
| London - Newcastle |
2 hr 50 min |
2 hr 00 min |
| London - Edinburgh |
4 hr 05 min |
2 hr 35 min |
| London - Glasgow |
5 hr 15 min |
3 hr 00 min |
Capacity
- High-speed rail offers very high capacity - 50% more than a 3 lane motorway at around a third of the time of the equivalent road journey
- Signalling systems on high-speed lines can handle a train every 4-5 minutes
- A high-speed line could provide up to 220 trains a day, compared with a potential 98 additional trains per day that the West Coast Main Line Upgrade will facilitate (currently 88 trains run a day)
Trains
- Trains on high-speed lines will be able to reach speeds of up to 200 mph
- Continental-style double length, double decker trains are able to carry up to 1,000 passengers each, Japanese bullets trains up to 1,600 each and UK trains, such as Eurostar, 750 passengers each - almost more than 2 jumbo jets put together
- Currently, one Eurostar journey between London and Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam has the equivalent capacity to five aircraft flights on these routes
- The most practical rail routes which allow trains to compete most effectively with cars and planes are on journeys of between 180 and 360 miles
- For example, the cross-channel high-speed rail service, Eurostar, has over 60% of the London to Paris rail/air market
Costs
- Ways to reduce the currently high cost of new rail infrastructure such as high-speed lines include:
- Building lines in phases rather than all at once could produce a cost saving of 20%-30%
- UK project management, planning, design and legal costs can reach 25% of the total cost (compared with 3% on the Spanish Madrid - Lerida line) and could therefore be reduced
- If these cost savings materialise, then the benefits could outweigh the costs by 3 to 1
- High-speed lines can reduce the demand for new roads, are better for the environment and can bring jobs, inward investment and economic regeneration to the regions they serve
Return to: High-speed rail index
