Readers letters
There has been great volumes of talk recently about the high speed rail links proposed for the UK and I feel obliged to pitch in with my thoughts on the issue. Let me first state that although I currently work as a Design Engineer for a company which designs and manufactures products for the rail industry worldwide, the opinions expressed here are my personal view and in no way reflect any opinions or policies of my employer.
While I accept that the UK's rail network lags behind the rest of Europe and that years of under investment have left it in need of much improvement. I have yet to be convinced that HS2 is the best answer. My feeling is that the political weight behind this plan comes from the desire for Great Brittan to be seen to be joining in with the expansion of high speed rail that has happened in mainland Europe and is being wholehearted embraced in China, and as such, is the desire for a "me too" product rather than part of any coordinated or integrated transport policy. The fundamental problem with HS2 is that it is nineteenth century technology. It's a big heavy train, it just goes faster than the ones we have now. Here in lies the problem, to accelerate large masses to high speed takes time and therefore distance as well as energy, hence the stations need to be few and far between or you will never get up to speed. In a small relatively densely populated country like ours the system only really works for people already close to the stations.
If we can afford to invest the time and money for HS2 I think it would be better to try and develop a transport system for the twenty first century and lead the world rather than following. The automotive industry is already pointing the way. There have been recent experiments conducted into wirelessly connected vehicles travelling in convoy, so that the lead vehicle controls the speed and more importantly the braking of all those in the convoy thus allowing reduced gaps between vehicles to free up road space. There are also many research projects currently under way at various universities and companies around the world, looking into the development of autonomous vehicles, the most publicised of these being the Google car. The great advantage of a rail way is that the operator has complete control over all the traffic on the network, so these sort of technologies could be introduced relatively quickly.
I envisage a system of small lightweight semi-autonomous carriages, carrying perhaps eight or ten passengers. These would be more easily accelerated to join the flow of traffic on the "main line". Two tracks or lanes on the main line would allow for traffic in both directions, while near the stations this would become four lanes to permit individual carriages of the "train" to leave the main line and stop at the station. After the exchange of passengers at the station the carriage would accelerate up to speed before rejoining the main line, blending in with the traffic as it did so. The carriages of the train would not be coupled together in the conventional sense but instead would be individual elements travelling in close convoy. This is just a brief outline of the system I have in mind, the main concept is that the high speed network I propose would serve more stations along the route and therefore more of the population.
Once autonomous cars have arrived on our roads, the business man in Coventry wishing to travel to London will face the following choice: Diving to the station to catch a train to Birmingham, thereby spending at least twenty minutes travelling in the opposite direction before he even boards the high speed train. Or. Entering his final destination as with a current sat nav, then sitting back to make phone calls and work on his laptop while the car drives itself direct to the destination. Given that scenario, the wrong choice of high speed rail will make it the expensive white elephant it's critics are claiming.
Terence Mair
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