18 November 2008
Evidence on high-speed rail presented to Parliament
Transform Scotland's Director Colin Howden and Chair Paul Tetlaw today presented evidence to the Scottish Parliament's Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee's
high-speed rail inquiry.
Transform Scotland supports high-speed rail, but with some caveats (we consider maglev to be an irrelevant distraction, while we see no prospect of stand-alone high-speed rail solely within Scotland).
The evidence presented argued that it is not necessary to build high-speed lines everywhere in order to get high-speed rail services: the Germans have got high-speed trains serving almost all of their major towns & cities without having to go to the expense of building new high-speed lines everywhere (only perhaps 10% of their high-speed trains run on new-build high-speed track). Given the long-standing opposition of the UK Government to high-speed rail, Transform Scotland is keen that progress on long-distance rail improvements is not frustrated by a vain wait for the the UK Government to build new high-speed lines to Scotland.
In particular we would like to see urgent action to provide rail based alternatives for many of the almost 100 daily flights to London from Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Our written evidence to the inquiry is available: see link on right.