Why doesn Britain have high speed trains?
Britain’s Inter City services do travel at speeds of up to 125 m.p.h. as opposed to the 186 mph of French TGVs and German ICEs. British governments have never invested money on the scale of those European countries with higher speed networks, but I don’t think our network is “crap” at all. Firstly the British railway network is one of the densest of any country except perhaps the Netherlands, with many rural lines as well as commuter and Inter City main lines. Our services also tend to be very high frequency compared with most countries. Manchester to London every half hour in 2 hours 10 minutes isn’t bad at all when you think that most airlines ask you to check in two hours before their flights; there are 6 trains per hour between Brighton and London, 3 trains per hour between Leicester and London; many of our railway lines are running at urban metro type frequencies. If you take a close look at the French railway system off the brilliant TGV network, you’ll see closed rural lines and
