Bullet trains coming to the UK

[Robinho]

So roads are 100% subsidised then... whereas trains are only partly subsidised (it's tax they use to make up the defecit from ticket prices)

Firstly, roads are paid for by tax and duties.

Jesus Christ guys. Road taxes and fuel duty are paid by motorists and are used to maintain the road system. This is no a subsidy, it is a usage fee. The subsidies trains receive are not from taxes raised by the existence of trains, they are from taxes that you or me pay when we do a contract or, or from VAT etc. So rails are being subsidised whereas roads are not.

Secondly, if you go in first class on a train from London to Paris, Hamburg to Frankfurt, Amsterdam to Cologne etc, you'll notice lots of people sitting there working on their laptops, making phone calls etc etc. They're working. Some of them are self employed, and we can assume they'll have done the sums. Some of them are employees, and you seem to assume that their bosses are idiots for paying the train fares. In other words, profits are being made, taxes are being paid, and some of those taxes are put back into the railways. It seems to work for the Germans at least.

As i have already explained, if people can be productive whilst using a train, then they should be happy to pay more for using it, instead of that more coming from the government.

[BA to the Stars]

Jesus Christ guys. Road taxes and fuel duty are paid by motorists and are used to maintain the road system. This is no a subsidy, it is a usage fee. The subsidies trains receive are not from taxes raised by the existence of trains, they are from taxes that you or me pay when we do a contract or, or from VAT etc. So rails are being subsidised whereas roads are not.

Can you confirm that everything spent of roads is generated by road taxes and fuel duty - if not then anything additional spent out of the tax pot will be a subsidy.

When all the motorways were built from the 1960's onwards, the taxes generated by motorists were insufficient to cover all the costs, therefore the infrastructure we use now was subsidised. The majority of the rail network was built prior to nationalisation and therefore funded privately. Therefore the majority of the rail infrastructure was not subsidised.

Perhaps it is only right that things are being balanced up - besides imagine the gridlock that would be caused by a non-subsidised rail network

[Robinho]

I suspect fuel levy more than covers the road infrastrutuce.

Of course if you can use the power of the state to nationalise private rail networks, eveything is cheap.

The past is the past though, all we care about is the future, and thus there is no need to balance things up.

Again, if lack of subsidies caused gridlock the trains would gain a competitive advantage. There is literally no need to subsidise anything, it simply encourages a misallocation of resources.

[BA to the Stars]

I suspect fuel levy more than covers the road infrastrutuce.

Of course if you can use the power of the state to nationalise private rail networks, eveything is cheap.

But if it doesn't, then it is subsidised

[Ignis Fatuus]

125 is just fine in a country this size.

London - Glasgow or Edinburgh > 400 miles.
Channel Tunnel - Aberdeen > 500 miles
Plymouth - Inverness > 600 miles.

This country is plenty big enough for high speed trains.

Any other country with pretensions to a rail network (from France to Canada) sees the "peripheral regions" as places to bind to the metropolis with communication links, not to leave out of transport planning because they are not central.

[Robinho]

But if it doesn't, then it is subsidised

Yes, i've already explained this concept to 2 idiots in this thread, it's not necessary to explain it to me.

[d000hg]

London - Glasgow or Edinburgh > 400 miles.
Channel Tunnel - Aberdeen > 500 miles
Plymouth - Inverness > 600 miles.

This country is plenty big enough for high speed trains.

The point I made was trains don't reach 125 'low speeds' on those journeys for much of the time. The London-Newcastle express only stops about 3 times en route and takes 3 hours to travel <300 miles.

Also, the number of people doing those journeys is few so don't justify a super-fast train network. Flying is better.