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Originally Posted by Osem
Damien - Forgive me but it's a hell of a lot of money to spend saving businesspeople 30 mins on a trip to Birmingham in the case of the first part of the network. Tourists would probably find hiring a car far more cost efficient given that when they get off their high speed train they have to take another form of transport to see the sights anyway.
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Well business people are frequent customers for rail links between cities. The idea is not to make their life easier, not primarily, but helping businesses prosper. Birmingham would be greatly served by being 'closer' to London. As for Tourists, they wouldn't find it easy navigating a city in a car so they would have to opt for public transport within those cities anyway.
Anyway, who cares if some people would still find it more economical to drive? The idea isn't to stop the use of the road network. Hopefully it will reduce the amount of cars on the road anyway.
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Given where we are, however, I think there are going to be other priorities for the £billions and improving what we've got would be one of them because I think we can all agree that our transport infrastructure is in dire need of improvement.
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This isn't chucking money anyway, we'll get some of it back, mostly indirectly if it succeeds in improving the prospects for businesses.