High Speed Rail to Go Ahead In The UK

While the Tea Party is busy destroying the USA's chance to have a HSR network, the UK is pushing on - though not without opposition of their own. Interestingly, the vocal opposition in the UK isn't coming from a local nutjob contingent like the Tea Party, but from the environmental lobby.

It's a fascinating Catch-22: a sustainable national transport network really needs HSR, but HSR needs to carve am enormous linear corridor out of the environment to be built. HSR lines share issues that highways do: they require large swathes of land, they create barriers through natural habitats, they aren't silent and they will easily kill any furry critter that strolls in front.

Anyway, the UK is going to do it, and its called HS2:

Key points• HS2 trains will be up to 400m long with 1,100 seats
• An extra 26,000 passenger seats each hour on intercity routes
• Trains to travel at up to 250mph
• Birmingham to London journeys now set to be 45 mins instead of 84 mins
• More than 22 miles of tunnel on the route
• A spur to Heathrow will be built by 2033

Read more at the Guardian.