Thursday, November 15, 2007

the romance of rail - is back ...


More proof that even this dumbo government realise the way things are going is the £800 million redevelopment of St Pancras for the new Eurostar trains. When is any money invested in roads nowadays?

But what chance does the car have against rail? There's no glamour in driving - it's an endless slog being stuck behind lorries, bikes, horses, old fuckers ... If you want to enjoy driving one last time head to eastern Germany where there are still no speed limits on many of the autobahns. This is going to change soon and all autobahns will have a 130kph limit.

Meanwhile rail just keeps growing. Soon all short-haul air trips will go. We still need to invest massively in the UK high speed network, now we've made a start. Within 20 years even medium distant air trips will go. I reckon we'll be doing Bristol to Budapest in 12 hours by 2037. And the light rail/interurban revival is only just beginning.

And the new Eurostar is promising ROMANCE again. This is something the railways always had in droves, until swept away by the socialists in the 60s and 70s. But romance is making a big comeback, and rail is - again - the big winner. In a car-less future we'll all become rail travellers, crossing Europe at 300 mph, catching the tram into town, visiting the coast and villages by light rail. We need romance. The car tried to kill it. It failed.
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