Why The United Kingdom Has No Bullet Trains - Slower Than A Speeding Bullet | High Speed Railway HS2

Why doesn't the UK, England Or Scotland have bullet trains like Japan? The answer is more complex than you think!

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China and Japan have won the high-speed train race. With bullet trains crisscrossing the Asian supercontinent, it has made the grandfather of rail, the UK look as slow as the rocket. Why does the UK not have bullet trains, and what is the future of high-speed rail in the British isles?

Way back in 1804, a British engineer named Richard Trevithick built the first railway engine, but steam locomotion would not take off in a big way until 1829 when inspired engineer George Stephenson built the rocket!

Great Britan would become a powerhouse of locomotion engineering and built a rail network that would envy the world. But then things slowed down.

Eventually, the government reformed curtained back the vast network of railways, and car companies came to dominate the landscape. With the inclusion of lorries and major highway systems, the train was regulated only to high capacity routes - leaving many rural areas out of luck.

So why did innovation stop in England? Why did they no longer invest in railways, and how did japan and others come to dominate rail?

There are five significant reasons why the UK doesn't have bullet trains or faster rail.

The first is the Short distances. About 80% of the UK's population lives in a minimal area between Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, and London. Spending a lot of money to go not very far more quickly is questionable - we are looking at saving under an hour for the longest routes, and dramatically less for cities near London. Other European rivals such as France, who have fast trains, is enormous and the benefits would be instantly realized.
The 2nd reason is the density of the population of the United Kingdom. Because of (1), it's pretty hard to lay out a new network because unlike, say, France, in the UK there aren't huge areas of space between significant population areas, with the exception of the 'space' south of the 'Central Belt' of Scotland.
The third is the historic Hostility to investment in rail. Successive British governments have not followed up on the potential of high-speed rail, and plans have fallen to the wayside.
Our fourth reason is much more interesting, and its called Path dependency. Britain invented railways, and pretty much filled the country with them tout de suite. Once they're laid out the network of slower rail, you have all the disadvantages of an early adopter. Japan and especially China are laying out high-speed rail for the first time ever, with no existing slow rail to compete.
The fifth and last reason is because of Economic decline. Partly a cause of three, partly a consequence, Britain has always struggled to raise sufficient capital in the post-war period for large nation-building projects.
The result is that the long-distance routes in the UK are operating at near capacity.

Experts have said that a new North-South railway line should be built, and the government has finally moved on that project with the HS2 railway.

High-speed trains will travel between London and Birmingham on 134 miles of dedicated track. They will pass through more than 30 miles of tunnels and over 10 miles of viaducts, delivering quicker journeys on more trains with more seats. Phase One has a funding envelope of £45bn and will open between 2029 and 2033.
It is set to reduce the time it takes to travel from London to Birmingham by L45 minutes, from the current time 82 minutes.

From here, the network will extend north to Connect to Manchester and beyond to the twin cities of Endibour and Glasglow. The whole route, once connected, will only take to Scotland to London, a HS2 time of 220 minutes, Current time 262 minutes, a saving of only 40 minutes.

There are other arguments for that the government should instead invest in more modern ideas, such as building a hyperloop or maglev technology (which would make the trip under half an hour), but it took England this long to create a single line I think we are pushing our luck.

The United Kindom may have started the rail race, but without serious investment for arguably little gain, its railways will only go as fast as the steam trains of yore. Leaving the future to the giants of the east.

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