by Peter Barker
LONDON, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) -- The proposal of building Europe's fastest railroad has to get the British government to think real hard: not only of its benefits, but of its costs and critics as well.
Fresh public perception of the pre-Christmas service disruption along Britain's first purpose-built high-speed railroad might have rendered Wednesday a bad time for proposing after all, though the cause of that disruption was pinned down on the French side of the Channel.
High Speed Two or HS2 for short, the firm to advise the government on the development of a high-speed rail service between London and Birmingham, handed in its proposal to the Department of Transport anyway.
If the government accepts the proposal, it will release in late March next year a white paper to detail out route proposal, construction schedule and assessment of finance, economy and environment.
The proposal cannot be finalized before a public consultation to start in the fall of 2010.
The London-Birmingham high-speed rail scheme, however, will weather its first test of cost-cutting from whichever party winning the British general election slated for the coming May.
If, that is if, everything goes along well, Britain's second purpose-built high-speed railroad will start construction in 2017 and open to service in 2025, at a cost no one dares nor cares to mention now.
The building of the country's first purpose-built high-speed rail, or High Speed One, already provoked debate among national media and rail circles on the merits of constructing higher speed railroads in the country.
But British Secretary of State for Transport Lord Andrew Adonis described the HS2 proposal as "important" in that it "will shape the future of high-speed rail" in Britain.
"High-speed rail has real potential to regenerate and reinvigorate. Our high-speed network lags behind that of many of our European neighbors and doesn't connect any of our major cities, but this report could change that.
"I am excited about the possibilities that high-speed rail has to transform transport in this country for the better, providing environmental benefits, encouraging investment and boosting business and jobs," he said in a statement.
The international definition of high-speed rail is new lines with a speed of at least 250 kilometers per hour (km/h).
High-speed rails were capable of doing 270 km/h in 1985 and are now able to do 350 km/h.
HS2 is designing rails that can do up to 400 km/h.
"While 400 km/h passenger trains do not currently exist, HS2 is designing a track that will be capable of carrying trains up to this speed in the future," the firm said in its online info message.
"It is highly unlikely that a high-speed train would be required to exceed this speed in the UK, even if the technology existed. This is mainly due to the fact that the overall time saved at speeds beyond 400 km/h would be so small that it would not justify the additional energy used and environmental impacts of going faster."
Unmentioned is probably another belated justification.
Though the origin of steam-engine locomotives and passenger rail services, Britain now has only 114 kilometers of high-speed railroad in existence, compared with 5,794 kilometers already in place and 3,218 kilometers under construction in Europe.
"Scrutiny of the (proposal) report will begin immediately and we will announce how we plan to take high-speed rail forward by the end of March -- making 2010 the year of high speed rail in the UK," the secretary of state has pronounced.
When the project is completed, 1,100 people can travel in the 400-meter-long train that departs every hour from either London or Birmingham to better connect the country's southeast and midwest.
