|  The opening of the UK’s sole piece of high-speed track into London’s St Pancras station on 14 November brings to an end 13 years of national embarrassment. During that time Eurostar streaked across France but creaked across southern England, begging the question of why the country that gave railways to the world fell so far behind in the provision of high-speed train services.
Britain’s railways were at the forefront of technical innovation for over a century. It is a common refrain that the UK has consistently allowed others to exploit the commercial potential of its creativity, and high-speed trains are no exception. The pre-privatisation, state-owned British Rail (BR) spearheaded active tilt technology for high-speed trains until 1985, when development of the pioneering Advanced Passenger Train (APT) was terminated. Tilt technology was developed to obviate the need for purpose-built high-speed lines of the kind generally required by non-tilting high-speed trains such as France’s TGV and Spain’s TGV-derived AVE. The APT’s active body-tilting system was successfully applied in Pendolino trains by Fiat, which bought some of BR’s APT technology and went on to win export as well as domestic orders for its trains. So whereas tilting trains began commercial fleet service in Italy in 1987, it was not until 2004 that Virgin introduced the UK’s first tilting fleet service, using a Fiat tilt system rather than a British one.  Coincidentally, since the APT was consigned to the scrapyard, the gap between the UK and most of western Europe in terms of high-speed development has steadily widened. The continent’s first high-speed line (LGV) opened between Paris and Lyon in 1981. When SNCF’s TGV services proved so popular that competing flights between France’s two largest cities were all but withdrawn, a rolling programme of high-speed line construction was developed, stretching into the 21st century. LGV Nord, linking Paris and the Channel Tunnel, was ready for business a year before the Queen and President Mitterand opened the tunnel itself in 1994; in contrast, the opening of Britain’s first section of high-speed line from the tunnel was delayed until 2003, only fully opening later this month.
France has completed over 1,700km of high-speed line, with a further 184km under construction and more in development, whereas the UK has no plans to add a single kilometre after High Speed 1 (HS1), which extends just 109km. Does this matter? Critics argue that prestigious high-speed rail schemes siphon off too much money, serving an elite business audience at the expense of the rest of the population and regional networks. Though most French regions are now investing in local passenger services, travel off the TGV network still compares unfavourably with the UK for both the frequency and reliability of its services. Few question the ability of high-speed trains to win custom at the expense of more environmentally damaging modes; in France they have typically increased rail’s share of the market by a factor of three. Experience on the continent and in Japan shows that people prefer the train to flying for business journeys of up to four hours and leisure trips of up to six. Within a month of starting operations last June, TGV Est trains were achieving load factors of 88% in second class and 75% in first. The mean occupancy rate for the 700-plus TGVs that run each day is 71%, thanks to the adoption of yield management ticket sales from 1992.  While TGV services produce a profit margin of 10%, the capital costs will always rely on the mix of EU, national and regional government contributions that funds French LGVs. Though cost/benefit analysis is at the core of the decision-making process, it is only sensible to take into account the wider externalities, but these are largely ignored in the UK. France clocked up rail travel worth €11bn last year, according to Euromonitor, compared to €10.1bn in Germany and €2.3bn in the UK. Even comparativelty tiny Switzerland wasn’t far behind the UK, with rail travel worth €1.54bn. As it has the most extensive high-speed network, it’s not surprising that France has the highest number of business journeys by rail.
The development of TGV services has been at the core of French transport policy for over 20 years, irrespective of the government. The UK has not only lacked a consistent approach, but also has a transport pricing policy that contradicts environmental objectives. The costs of less damaging modes of transport have been allowed to rise, while the most damaging have fallen. Flying has never been cheaper, with no tax on aviation fuel or VAT on fares. Critics argue that the UK Treasury is guilty of a long-standing mindset that money spent on railways is a subsidy, whereas money spent on roads or airport infrastructure is an investment. Funding for UK transport schemes is heavily biased against rail, favouring road schemes in order to maximise fuel duty receipts for the government. Points in the appraisal process are awarded to road schemes that generate traffic on the basis that they will bring in more fuel tax revenue to government; conversely, a scheme that reduces the use of cars or trucks is penalised for the fuel tax revenue lost. Theoretical time savings are a major justification for road building, calculated over 30 years despite the fact that the extra capacity created by some road schemes is exhausted in less than a year through generated traffic. There is no measure of the environmental damage caused by road building. Until January even the cost of carbon emissions was ignored, but the Department for Transport now ascribes a value of £70 (€100) per tonne when many analysts suggest that a figure of nearer £1,000 should be used in such appraisals. The latest government-commissioned report on the future of transport, by a former British Airways chief executive, refused to endorse a north-south high-speed line, the putative HS2, because the author questioned its ability to reduce carbon emissions; he expressed doubt that enough passengers would switch from air to rail, despite all the evidence of overwhelming modal shift elsewhere. Similarly, a government White Paper undermined the business case for HS2 by citing mischievously low load factors that have not been the experience of France’s TGV, Eurostar or indeed any other high-speed rail link anywhere in the world. Behind the UK’s curious policy direction is the deep-seated belief that cars express private liberties where railways smack of a socialist alternative, a view dating back to Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the 1980s. Exactly, the French might say in reply. A comparison between the latest UK infrastructure schemes and the French investment plan to 2013 is telling. The former contain one major line upgrade and one large station remodelling, in contrast to France’s programme of extensive electrification, new lines and reopenings. If Robert Stephenson, British maker of the first commercial steam locomotive in 1829, were alive, he would surely wonder how his country had so comprehensively lost the plot. EB |