High-speed rail is affordable

摘要

The timetable for building a highspeed line between London and Leeds as set out by Theresa Villiers on October 9 would see a competition for project development launched immediately on the election of a Conservative government in 2010. The new government would also 'cancel all moves towards a third runway at Heathrow'. The first step would be to invite bids to provide the infrastructure in return for 'a fixed payment towards land and track, leaving the private sector with all construction and operating risks'. Getting a hybrid bill through parliament and designing the route would take until 2015, she suggested, 'and by then most of the major projects undertaken by the current government like Birmingham New Street, Reading and Thameslink are scheduled to have been completed, and Crossrail has a couple of years to run.'