There's too much car dependancy in the UK, and until that evolves, nothing much will change. I've used railways now for almost 20 years and although they are now overcrowded and often expensive, they remain far more relaxing than driving.
We need to catch up with Eire and establish a good rail network that is generally on time and then maybe people would relinquish a few cars and alleviate the congestion.
I never get the argument for rail. Maybe if you are a london commuter or someone who lives in a city centre and only ever goes to other city centres but for the very large majority of the population , trains are at best irrelevant.
If I wanted to make the journey I moaned about and do it by train I would have to drive 20 miles to the station and pay to park my car, then take the train to the nearest station before hiring a car to get to my destination. The journey time would be maybe 90 mins in the car plus 5 hours on the train so no time saving compared with driving. The cost would be £70 plus parking plus car hire - maybe £120 all in ? And I would still have to own a car with all the standing expense that involves.
But with the car I can travel when I want and if the road system was in decent condition I could do the journey in half the time.
The reality of life is that people work for and want the personal freedom that comes with their own transport and not to be forced into public transport. This country is a democracy - its the governments job to give us what we want, not what the current political fashion thinks we should have. So stop wasting money on rail - HS2 alone would finance the building of 3300 miles of completely new motorway or add an extra lane to 10,000 miles. That would more than double the existing motorway network. HS2 is madness!
