Maglev in House of Commons Debate
UK Ultraspeed welcomes the positive comments on maglev made during the Parliamentary Debate on InterCity Rail Services on 13/03/2007.
Paul Rowen (Rochdale) (LD): The longer-term question is: what happens once we have provided that capacity? How do we take it further on a network that will not be able to accommodate any more trains? We need to have a proper discussion about the development of a brand-new high-speed train that serves London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Although Eddington may have pooh-poohed the idea, I believe that if we seriously want people from Edinburgh not to fly but to catch the train down here, we need a service that can travel between the two cities in under three hours, which will be deliverable only with a brand new line and a brand new high-speed train that can deliver such services. Whether that is a Maglev train or the French variant of the HST, we need to be carrying out investigations in that respect. We can deal with things with our existing network for the next 10 years, but if we are to continue to encourage people to use the train, we will need to develop those high-speed routes.
[...]
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con): My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) summed things up rather accurately when he said:
“Transport is one of Britain’s big headaches...We already know that major routes...are going to be full to capacity in ten years time. That’s why we have to start assessing...longer term solutions”.
On 19 January, my hon. Friend announced that the Conservative party was undertaking a further feasibility study to address the congestion problems about which we are all hearing. The study will look at technology that would allow an eight-minute journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh and a 15-minute trans-Pennine journey. I refer, of course, to Maglev technology and the next generation of travel. That is the sort of medium and long-term thinking and feasibility study work that needs to be done now to ensure that we make improvements and overcome congestion constraints.
As a point of clarification, UK Ultraspeed again points out that a maglev journey between Glasgow and Edinburgh will take between 12 and 15 minutes (not 8) once acceleration and braking have been taken into account, but only 17-18 minutes including an intermediate stop at Edinburgh Airport.
This compares to around 1 hour city-to-city by train and anything up to two hours by road at congested times.
High Speed Debate: HoC 13/03/07
Thursday, 15 March 2007