Originally Posted by Damien

I was on the high speed rail link connecting London to Kent today. I've been on it before and it really is very good. Comfortable, modern and fast. I had experience going the same route while at University, before the HS1 was finished, and it's significantly better now so whenever I make that trip I always take it.

I can't understand why we shouldn't roll out the network across the country. It's fantastic. Imagine the benefits of the major cities and commuter hubs being connected by high speed rail, suddenly the entire country will be within a short amount of time from each other.

I see people saying that it 'only' saves 23 minutes. That isn't an insignificant amount of time to save for that journey. If we were talking about London to Glasgow then maybe but saving 23 minutes on the relatively short Journey to Birmingham is noticeable.

The only problem I can see if we're too slow in building it. We should have started building already and be going to Manchester now, with Birmingham a mere milestone along the way.