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Transport: High-speed Rail

My Lords, there is certainly a possibility of services running from Birmingham to Brussels. The report sets out a number of options for how High Speed 2 and High Speed 1 can be linked, including the possibility of developing a fixed rail link which will enable the trains to run through. There is also a possibility—the two are not mutually exclusive—of a rapid transit system between Euston and St Pancras. By rapid transit, I mean that Euston and St Pancras would be only two minutes away from each other. At the moment they are very difficult to travel between, yet they are much closer than the terminals of most airports. If we could link the two then, given the frequent Eurostar trains from St Pancras, this would greatly enhance the capacity of people coming from the high-speed line to travel on to the continent, whether or not there was also a fixed link between the High Speed 2 and High Speed 1 lines. Eurostar is also important in the context of services going off the high-speed line. The report envisages that the high-speed fleet would include trains that, like the Eurostars, were capable of running on both high-speed and conventional tracks. You would get the maximum benefits of the high-speed line while the trains were travelling on it but they could serve destinations beyond. This gets very technical. We have the big issue that in Britain we have a much narrower loading gauge than applies on the continent. That is why the Eurostar trains had to be specially designed so that they are capable of travelling on the British tracks; standard continental trains cannot travel on the British tracks because they are too wide. Special trains would need to be designed. This took place with Eurostar and we envisage it taking place for at least a portion of the trains that are to travel on the high-speed line in order that they can serve destinations beyond the line itself.