Part of the mantra seems to be that trains are good and we should have more of them. You get the often quoted fact that a flight London-Paris takes ten times as much fuel as a train journey.
On the continent, they apparently view trains as a "public good", according to a letter I saw in the Times yesterday or so. This means they build them and subsidise them so that fares are low or lowish. The subsidies appear to be hidden, near as I can tell. They don't understand our "business" approach to railways.
This may be all very well, and the service is often good, but at what cost? Making something *appear* cheap does not actually *make* it cheap. Once I needed to go Cambridge-Glasgow on a business trip. I looked into a train journey, but it seemed to cost several times the cost of an Easy flight from Stansted. So I flew. Seems odd that an airline can make a profit under those circumstances whereas the train, even in the UK, is subsidised.
Then I think about the huge infrastructure required to get a train from Cambridge-Glasgow (or as many as needed, with changes). What does this cost to install and maintain?
So, are trains as green as is claimed? Does the figure in my "oft-quoted fact" stand up - or is it just the marginal cost? Is HS2 a good thing or just an advanced form of willy-waving?