I was watching a documentary on British life in the late 50’s, how the “forward thinkers” of the time called for tearing up many of the rail lines in the UK, saying they were obsolete and inefficient. Now over half a century later the “train brains” say more rail lines are the answer.
You seem to have missed the point of the article. It isn’t a debate on the pros vs. cons of rail.
Lord Beeching led the way there, once all of the railroads were taken over by the government.
Thatcher tried her best to undo the British Rail fiasco, by re-privatizing. But all the lefties even in her own party stood in the way, and it got half done.
The funny thing is, instead of building this HS2 boondoggle, there are some of those closed main lines that could be upgraded to high speed for cheaper.
In the UK trains are the answer.
Most of the roads are at or close to saturation point, with little or no room to build more.
If the network was closed the country would be at a standstill the following morning.
Privatisation was an unmitigated disaster because of the attitude of the “self appointed” management in this country. Most of them have never started and run a company in their lives. Only British Telecom was a success from day one and remains so. Everything else is crumbling.
You can’t run a high stress infrastructure , in any discipline, and not maintain it at all for ten years, then wonder why it ceases to function correctly.
HS2 is not required at all. Improvements to existing infrastructure would perform just as adequately. Reopening of old lines is mostly impossible, the land was sold off and built on whilst the private ‘ experts’ where in charge.