All aboard? I'm very glad to see that the high speed railway system in Europe is getting its act together and competing with short haul air travel. Railteam.eu will mean that you will be able to buy tickets for high speed international trains a lot easier in the future. Previously passengers had to rely on the excellent Seat 61 for such things even though you would have thought train companies would be interested in making the purchase of tickets as easy as possible.

High speed rail is quicker city centre to city centre and a whole lot greener than air transport. Great Britain is only a small island so I think there should be an alternative to internal flights in the UK. I think simply banning domestic flights is not the right step at the moment but we should want to get the transport system to provide the great alternatives which are cheaper, greener and more convenient.

Britain has only one high speed rail line known as high speed one which is the english side of the channel tunnel to London route. Presently there is talk of high speed two replacing the west coast main line from London to Glasgow in a few decades time. This is all to the good but really we should be aiming for double figures at least not just 2 lines.

It is of course easy to call for expenditure, look at the fib dems for one, but it is important to say where the money should come from. I think we should slap on a £50 per flight High Speed Train Levy on all domestic flights and there should be an escalator of inflation + 5% applied annually. This would be a hypothicated tax that would be used only to finance high speed rail rather than general expenditure. We should also use the tax system to ensure that flights are always the most expensive means of travel as along as they are the most environmentally damaging.

We also need to approach this on a European level with expansion of the high speed rail networks across the continent and a transnational HSTL on short haul European flights.  ¶ 1:46 pm