2023 has been full steam ahead for rail transport with a roster of new train routes and destinations announced.
The future of rail travel in the UK looks bleak. Here's why.
17.12.2023 - 11:31 / nationalgeographic.com
Last month’s announcement that the government will scrap phase two of the HS2 rail project, set to run from the West Midlands to Manchester, felt like another nail in the coffin for Britain’s beleaguered train network. Conceived in 2009, the HS2 main line was set to cut journey times between the north and south and create more seat space on the network, encouraging travellers to prioritise lower-carbon rail travel over cars and flights.
Slow trains, service cancellations and delays are all major bugbears — but ticket cost often comes top of the list. In July this year, the UK performed particularly poorly in an analysis of European rail by climate campaigner Greenpeace. It analysed 112 routes in Europe and found train fares were on average twice as expensive as the equivalent flight — in the UK, it was around four times as expensive. “The cost is a barrier,” says Cat Jones, founder of UK-based flight-free holiday company Byway. “Take the London to Edinburgh route — it’s five times less carbon if you go by train rather than fly, but up to four times more expensive to do so.” The reason behind the expense is complicated. Policy and privatisation are major factors. “It’s about where you decide to invest as a government and, at the moment, the investments are going into air,” says Jones. The aviation industry receives tax breaks that other transport doesn’t — flights in the UK are exempt from jet fuel tax and VAT, for example. Annual subsidies reportedly worth around £7bn enable airlines in the UK to offer artificially cheap fares that rail simply cannot compete with. Since British Rail’s privatisation in the 1990s, the network has been seen to operate on the principle of profits, not people.
“HS2 is — or rather, was — the greatest upgrade the existing rail network could have had,” says Mark Smith, founder of the Man in Seat 61 train travel website. Connecting eight of Britain’s 10 biggest cities on a new main line, it would have produced a step change in speed, reliability and capacity, encouraging more car-free movement and curtailing domestic air travel. This would have freed up space for local services on the existing network. “When fully completed, London to Edinburgh or Glasgow would have taken three hours 38 minutes [compared with around five to five-and-a-half hours now], transferring significant passenger numbers from air to rail on two of Europe’s busiest air routes,” says Smith. The carbon footprint of that journey from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley is 12.5kg, compared with 165.1kg for the equivalent journey by air. Greater capacity would have helped bring fares down, too. “You cannot fill 900-seat trains leaving every few minutes with expensive business fares, you need to
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