Time to de-privatise UK railways.

Why is it more expensive to catch a train rather than a plane in the UK?

Why do rail travelcards cost 3x the price of those in Australia?

Durian, London,

All this talk about the UK not investing is rubbish - over the last ten years, the Brits have replaced the entire West Coast Mainline to the tune of several billions, finally allowing the tilting trains to run - journey speeds are much better as a result. Now the East Coast Line looks set for renewal, a Bill for Crossrail is going through parliament, £2b was announced yesterday for commuter lines and £15b is going (albeit slowly) on the tube - nearly all the East & West mainline carriages are either brand new or refitted. Look at the soon to be unveiled Kings Cross St Pancras and the new eurostar terminals! What on earth is all this if it is not investment? If people really want to know the difference between the UK and France, it's this: if it had been done here, it would not be seen as some huge achievement, but as a vanity exercise, tagged as a '£20m PR stunt' and Blair would have been given the blame for the lot.

Simon, London,

Roger Goodacre makes the point about SNCF's massive debts and operating costs. It's a valid one, but there is a counter-argument.

How much money is being lost to industry generally, because of the inadequacies of our public transport system? It's not a measurable amount, of course, which makes it difficult to be sure of the details; but let's look at some completely imaginary figures.

If SNCF runs at a loss of two billion euros a year, but the boost to industry provided by its speedy and efficient service is equal to *three* billion euros a year, then it's a worthwhile investment even by cold capitalist terms. A similar argument applies in Britain; we may not run our railways at such a huge loss, but how much money are we losing out on because of it?

Paul Heyes, Sheffield, United Kingdom

..and still my old 'Intercity 125' on the line from Reading to Paddington has yet to touch even 100mph in all the years I have taken the train. Hats off to the French for serving their rail travelling public so well. Alison Foster, CEO of First Great Western, hang you head in shame...

Mark, Reading, UK

I notice that the usual French overmanning and job-creation was in place - 3 drivers ! However, well done, what a ride.

T. Griffiths, Buxton, UK

It's exciting - we're slowly inching our way upwards to regular 400 km/hr passenger rail service! Why fight traffic when you can avoid it?!

I'm a huge fan of Maglev's incredible speed, even if there have been passenger deaths (when some schlemiel cleared it to run on a track blocked by a large maintenance vehicle). But the problem (as usual) is that you can't start from scratch and rebuild the entire rail network. Once they leave their own high-speed lines, TGVs, ICEs, Eurostars, Thalys, AVEs etc can all operate across the European network once fitted with proper power and signal units.

One simple reason that there has never been a passenger fatality in a TGV is that the cars are connected in a semi-rigid continuous line that prevents them from jackknifing and folding up like an accordion or being tossed in every direction. (This can happen with other designs; perhaps you saw photos of the Virgin rail accident in February, or the horrific 1998 ICE crash.)

Benjamin de Vulpillieres, Grenoble, France

There are two points debated here when we compare the UK to France. One - Why is SNCF so superior to the UK's railways? Simple - The French offer a service to the public - the UK offer a profit to the shareholder. Two - Would this work here? Of course it would. The UKs problem is our economy is London-centric - people come to the capital to make money resulting in sky-high property prices. Our Transport system is so archaic our trains are too slow and too short to transport enough people around so people live as close to London as possible (or other main cities like Manchester) instead of being quickly transported from further away. This pushes up the cost of living in London. In France and other countries with TGV-type trains it is more balanced and affordable. Transport should be central to a development strategy not a nice to have. It is intrinsic in my view and therefore the French have got it spot on.

Richard, London, UK

I thank Jami has a great point. Whilst us British pay for crap wars the Frence pay for magnificent trains - no contest really.

Matthew, cardiff, wales

Yes the French are better and bolder at long-term infrastructure planning, but the last time I looked the SNCF was carrying accumulated debt of more than 20 billion euros. Those who think rail travel is worth the investment regardless of the cost don't live in the real world. As has been pointed out elsewhere, France has the space to accommodate long straight dedicated TGV lines; the UK doesn't. Taking advantage of her geographical hub position, France is also clever in designing new developments to qualify for European subsidies. Our 'high-speed' lines, even the new St Pancras-Folkestone link, have to share the track with local services, which immediately exacerbates the potential for accidents. The comparison of fatality rates is disingenuous: unfortunately fatalities do occur regularly on French railways, including three maintenance workers killed by a TGV in 2000 at Pasilly. As in the UK, the number of fatalities in relation to total number of journeys is very small.

Roger Goodacre, London,

In fact, in 1993 in northern France, a sinkhole caused a sudden track collapse and half of a TGV left the track going several hundred kilometers per hour, but remained upright thanks to the 200-ton weight of an entire train-set keeping it together and level.

Also, there are no level crossings along dedicated high-speed lines (traffic goes over or under on bridges or in tunnels). Believe me, people the world over think that red lights are for the other guy...

Benjamin de Vulpillieres, Grenoble, France

"The record had cost €30 million to stage and taken a year to plan, but none of the French media asked questions about cost. No one even mentioned that the €5 billion TGV Est line had been approved despite official predictions that it would never make a profit"

€30 Million cost ok but We dont speak from Rentability but from Public Services. I'am proud to be French and paid Tax for this thing. It's mor better to pay Tax for that als for War.

Sorry for my English but I speak better Germain.... :-)

Jami, Mulhouse, France

Amazing. Living in California, this mode of transportation would be so appreciated here instead of 20 hour drives to my brother in Oregon or suffering through over-regulated, crowded, and chaotic flights. Well....you could take the bus...anyway....felicitations to all who made it possible. Hope to visit.

Todd, Riverside, CA

The sort of thing the French are great at. Well done.

But the sort of thing we should be looking at is the Maglev system as mentioned in the report. This would be true progress. 21st century stuff.

Bertram, chelmsford,

What to give for such innovation and development here in Australia. This technology is ideal for the flat landscape here. Mind you, its lamb chops for the locals should the odd sheep wander acros the tracks!

phil mckenzie, melbourne, australia

Richard makes a valid point - trains that ran at 350mph wouldn't even get up to top speed from London before they were slowing down to enter Milton Keynes - but seeing the French constantly improving their speeds, while our own network is actually SLOWER than a quarter-century ago, certainly makes me feel depressed. I expected our trains to be well over 150mph by now.

There's probably one service - London/York/Newcastle/Edinburgh - where such hideous speed would be useful. Given that there is only the one, it'd be a waste of time developing it for the UK.We shouldn't be competing for this record, but we certainly should be going faster than we are.

Not to mention, of course, that in 20-odd years of TGV ultra-high-speed travel, the French have yet to record a SINGLE fatality. What are they doing right that we're doing wrong? Again, they have more space to work with and less roads to cross, but there has to be something else to it.

Paul Heyes, Sheffield, United Kingdom

France is a physically big country with a limited number of significant cities (Paris, Strasbourg, Marseille, etc.). The distances between them are great, so it makes sense to have a very high speed train network connecting them up and, by way of their geographical location in Europe, the surrounding countries. Germany is the other major European country to develop trains at these speeds for similar reasons.

Look at the UK by comparison, there are major cities quite close to each other, few express trains don't stop at most of them, so we need to have a medium-fast network instead, connecting, for example, Manchester, Birmingham and London. So it's not worth our while creating super fast high speed trains, whereas I can see the national advantage in a country like France with a different city-geography. Well done France, genuinely, but it's not something the UK should have been seeking.

Richard C, Leeds,

It's become popular in the UK to gloat about the state of the French economy...

But here's proof the French get plenty right - and not just food and wine. One of the best railway systems in the world. Cheap, clean, fast, and almost never late. Not private. Run by the state.

Compare that to the public transport mess in the UK!

Murphy, London,

For a country that gave the world railways, I was ashamed of the recent statistic that it takes longer now to travel from London to Manchester than 25 years ago. Even though I'm a free market sort of person, I'd gladly renationalise our railway system and subject whichever government to the challenge of providing a decent piece of infrastructure. For once. And have the long term committment that France and Germany do to railways, rather than the next popular headline.

Howard Broadwell, Nottingham,

Until there'll be a train actually transporting people at this speed on a daily basis many years will be passing by.
Of course it's an achievement and perhaps they will be able to push the limit a little bit further. But I fear that the technological limit is close and for further improvement a third generation TGV will be necessary. On the other hand the technology of magnetic suspension as used by the Japanese Maglev or the German Transrapid is still at the beginning of its use promising further potential of enhancement. Let's see how the Japanese will answer the gaunt thrown by the French.

Gino, Paris,

well i think that is too fast for safety,that is just my view. I think maby the people themselves should slow down. This speed on a train would be very scary,and rightly so.

Parker Irving, Stellarton, Nova Scotia Canada

As a native of Japan, as we also have the absolute fastest train in the world, the competition how fast train runs concerns me a lot and is always center of scrutiny. The cost of building those trains is unbelievably high. Our latest train, Maglev, costs 1 billidon US dollar to just build 1 km of railroad. I think the reducition of cost will be a main issue, not how fast the train can reach.

Sushi, New York,

I wish we had this in the U.S.!! Europeans are lucky they are stuck with a choice between long security lines at airports or overcrowded highways.

Diego Rodriguez, Dallas, TX

Awesome! That train would never work here in the USA... With so many stupid drivers that ignore approaching trains and try to cross before the train, most don't make it...

Mandito, Miami, Florida

Well I guess the people who chose to ride this train wont be able to stop and smell the flowers. What a shame!

valerie miller, Hudson, Quebec, Canada

Vive la France!

I have never ridden the TGV but would love to ...

So what if it cost a fortune...

Anyone remember Concorde, none of us could afford to fly on it. It cost us Billions and we still looked up with pride.

Fair play to the French, the public will be able to benefit from this... and it will give us another reason to visit France.

Cos there wont be a TGV arriving at a British station anytime soon.

tooldtodieyoung, Bristol, United Kingdom

> Alex
Come on, we french don't have 2 hours lunch on a regular basis ;-), maybe twice a year, for christmas and new year's day.
I took several times the TGV between St Etienne and Paris, it's so great, and you can go to a conference in Paris and be back home the same day, though it's about 370miles.

Half Activist, StE, France

The unquestioning pride the French feel in their super fast rail system puts the British to shame. If the train had existed in Britain we would have cavilled about the cost and betrayed in a mean-spirited attitude to such attempts to achieve excellence.

Frank Rutherford, London,

Pedro ... just know that the Maglev is a magnetic train that has nothing to do with traditionnal trains like the TGV. Today's goal was not to beat the the Maglev's record ... but even 4 years later, being so close to it is just amazing ... France rules !

Phil, London, UK

Yes tw, but looking on the bright side we now have wall to wall accountants and so called consultants who are a complete block on any type of innovative or visionary investments. I'm sure we will look back at them in years to come and think.......what the hell were we thinking??. At least France seems to keep these mandarins where they belong, strictly in the background where they belong.

Jim, Bristol,

Well done! Bien joué!
After WWII priority was given to the railroads rather the "Autoroutes" ( Motorways) and when these eventually were built they very rarely came free for drivers and the toll costs are pretty high.
So taking the TGV rather than one's car makes much more sense here than in the UK..Also the TGV has a great impact on the way many people go about their work.Spending a full day work at Dunkirk ,Brussels , Lyon or Nantes and back home in the Paris the same day is now very common .
The French hate the "tradition" of the annual(s) strikes they have to suffer from the SNCF workers , but love their public service trains very much and accept very well that the new TGV Est might not be economical. But who really knows until it works. the first one (to Lyon) was expected to pay back in 10 years, it did in 5
Not a single of our 9 candidates to the Presidential Election would ever dare mention privatization of the SNCF. Only one of the differences with the UK....and M.Blair

charles hazan, Meudon, France

Mais oui, vive les francais. Perhaps they can jolt our complacent politicians into doing something about our own railways.

Mark, London, UK

Cudos to the French engineers. For a country that landed a man on the moon decades ago and fails to have any kind of meaningful rail service 4 decades later, it is shameful and embarassing. What the U.S. has instead are overcrowded airplanes, bankrupt airline companies and an embarassingly bad rail system. But we do have highways going in every possible direction that become more and more clogged and open spaces disguised as parking lots. And oh yes, what is it I read about GM and Ford laying off thousands and closing factories and facing bankruptcy? Is anyone in charge here? How about we put Totota in charge. They seem to have it figured out. What a mess! It's a national embarassment with nothing on the horizon that will begin to turn things around in my lifetime.

Nedsky, Portland, Maine

Building this line and high-speed train is not about profit. It's about giving France a 21st century, state of the art infrastructure and unparalleled public service which will improve mobility and trade. This is what England needs - a long-term vision, rather than a few short-term fixes which just results in an outdated and dangerous road and rail infrastructure.

Val, London,

Bertrand, in the UK you can work if you want to, not the same in other European countries, believe me. Otherwise, why would some many young Europeans be coming here to look for work?

As for the French record, the maglev already reached 580km/h four years ago. What is all the fuss about, when four years later a train fails to even match this speed?

Pedro, London, UK

What has happened to us Brits?

Iran now "Rules the Waves" under the eyes of Britainia's warships.

Once world leaders in manufacturing, Britain has lost its aircraft, car and shipbuilding industries. Even the latest QE luxury liner was built in France!

Poor old Stevenson must be turning in his grave alongside his beloved Rocket, probably quietly blowing its last gasket _ oh dear, oh dear.

And now we might even get Gordon Brown as Prime Minister (still marginally better, hopefully! than the toff's head prefect)! Whatever next? NOT the Libs - please!!

Vivre La France et les Francaise.

tw, shrewsbury,

Briitish Rail are you watching this ????

John Collins, Darlington , Co Durham England

Have the Brits ever wondered why all these other countries can make trains work, whereas the country who invented them cannot.

There is a thing called: "investment". The British think about investment as an expenditure. Consequently, when they do not invest, they think that they are "saving" money.

Result: six high-fatality train crashes in the past decade, against France's zero. And, French trains are faster, more spacious, more reliable, and cheaper to run.

The British system is really one characterised by centralised incompetence and greed, and the result is third-world infrastructure at top-of-the-world cost.

john, London,

It's nice to see that national pride is still alive and well somewhere in Europe.

AdrianM, London, London

"The record had cost €30 million to stage and taken a year to plan, but none of the French media asked questions about cost. No one even mentioned that the €5 billion TGV Est line had been approved despite official predictions that it would never make a profit,"

I cannot help but smile when I read such nonsense and in the year 2007, the idea of a TGV in the UK is as ridiculous as it was in Cameroon back in 1987.

I have the same smile when I read that the unemployment in the UK is at an all time low compared to the rest of Europe....

Bertrand , London, UK

good news. new line Paris Est to Basle in 3.30 hours. We will be able to go on Eurostar to Paris transfer and be in Basle in time for tea. Not possible before. Even quiter after November when St. Pancras opens.

When will trains go direct from St. Pancras to Strasburg and beyond?

David Restarick, London,

At least the french understand that at times there is a price on being proud of your country.

The very idea of building something worthwhile (unlike the millenium dome) and non-profit in the UK simply to show we can is laughable.

And that's the reason this country is the state it's in these days - no one has a reason to be proud of it any more.

peter, york, uk

It could never happen in the UK.

Just before the first section of the UK Channel Tunnel rail link to Ashford opened a Eurostar train opened up the throttle but I believe that the Health & Safety Executive put a limit on the speed of the train. It seems that in France, national pride overrules civil servants.

Peter, Maidstone, UK

Stuff air travel!
20 minutes from Dorset to Waterloo
Railtrack wake up, UK wake up!

The Duke of Putney, Dorset,

I never really understood why people who eat two-hour lunches are in such a hurry on trains, planes, and automobiles. Then again, I never really understood why people who eat 15 minute dinners will settle for 16 hours from New York to Detroit by rail.

Alex, Staten Island, New York

Amazing speed. Must be quite a rush to be riding that train. I've riden the maglev in Shanghai and it was rocking a bit which made me nervous. Can't imagine a train on wheels going even faster.

Noah, Chicago, IL, USA

Well done to the S.N.C.F.it is good to see Europe take the record back from the Japanese.The T.G.V. has long been the finest train in the world,it's safety/comfort/punctuallity/speed point to point easy beats any other system in the world.Compare this to our broken down unsafe overcrowded system,and think what might have been.
The politicians from Churchill to Thatcher ran the railway network down.When it should still be carrying the nations freight.The French
invested in their railway,and this was no piecemeal solution,all the
lines ran over virgin country so no slow moving freight traffic to get in
the way.Again well done France.

GERARD FLANNERY, HARTLEPOOL, United Kingdom.

Well done to the French! I'm proud of the fact that we in the UK invented rail travel, but appalled that in comparison to the French and other country's services we have little more than slow cattle trucks (in fact as previous comparisons have shown,. cattle get a better, quicker ride on the railways). Just shows how badly mismanaged big technological projects are in this country, despite our brains. The numerous disasters with government computer projects are in a similar vein. The British are great for technology and science invention, hopeless at realising them on a large scale (these days, despite our great engineering history). Bureaucracy, our education system, and lack of national respect for scientists and engineers (the exact opposite of Canada for example, where they are rightly lauded) are to blame I feel.

Alex Kerr, London, UK

Well done for the French I say. If it was to take place in the UK, not that it is likely to any time soon, it would only be met by a bunch of hand-wringers pointing out how many wind turbines could have been erected for the cost of the test. Or it would have maybe gone into the Civil Service pension fund.

The UK should be making locomotives like this, we invented the things!

Harold, Bath, UK

Wow!...That must have been one heck of an experience!
Nice to see a Journo Earning his money!

Simon Falla, Newcastle, UK

"The Ecxellence of France" is a bit arrogant, but I'm glad they pulled it off without disaster.

Devon, yotsukaido, japan

We should take pride in our railways too. Bring back subsidies and make them work.

Brian Simmons, Exmouth,