The Train Not Leaving the Station

France and Spain have impressive high speed electric train services, connecting diverse parts of their countries. The UK's High Speed 2 (HS2) was also intended to provide a fast connection, via Birmingham, beween London and the Northern English cities of Manchester, Bradford and Leeds. It was supposed to be part of the promised 'levelling up' programme, reducing the North-South economic divide. The UK is, however, a highly congested place and its was always going to be more difficult and expensive to construct HS2 compared to lines in France or Spain. There's been many complaints about the cancellation of HS2. England will now only have a fast connection between London and Birmingham. It's been suggested that the track should have been started from the cheaper Northern end and that other aspects of the plan were misconceived. For example, near London, many sections have involved expensive tunelling (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/10/why-the-hs2-dream-was-never-on-the-right-track). Fast train services between London and a variety of Northern cities could theoretically have helped cut down the 'greenhouse gas' emissions associated with flight. They would only, however, have produced this benefit, if they were more reliable and proved cheaper than taking the plane. This was never going to be the case, as current privatised UK train journeys, are many times the cost of budget airlines.