Oooh! High speed rail plans. By the Conservatives!

12.28.58am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 29th Sep 2008

It's time we had a world class railway system.

The Conservatives are pledging to scrap the third Heathrow runway and spend £20Bn (£4.4Bn private money) on a high speed rail link from London to Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.

The flights between those cities would cover off 44% of the runway capacity.

I'm excited about this not because its new (it isn't - the Lib Dem plans launched similar plans a few weeks ago in Bournemouth) but because Labour doesn't seem to want to do it, and there's a good chance the Tories will get in.

Little bit disconcerted that they won't start spending money on it until 2015, but I suppose that's just over one term after the next general election, and it'd take that long to do the ground work.

The Lib Dems would, literally, go further: we'd run the network all the way to Scotland.

Related Links:

Guardian: Tory plans

Lib Dem plans

Arup (Engineering company)