Saturday 24 October 2009
Greta Garbo wanted to be, and Girls Aloud thought they were, and now according to a new survey, 44% of people would do it with the extra hour they’ll gain this weekend when the clocks go back. It seems more and more people want to be alone and enjoy a bit of ‘me time’, with more women than men wanting to spend some time by themselves. Only 31% of respondents wanted more to spend more time with family and friends, and just 29% of people wanted to spend their extra hour sleeping in.
The survey was conducted by the HSR (High Speed Rail) UK campaign group. With a high speed rail network, London to Scotland journey times could be reduced to two hours and 38 minutes (compared with a current time of four hours and 30 minutes between London Euston and Glasgow Central), while Newcastle journey times to London could be reduced to one hour and 40 minutes (compared to a current time of three hours and 8 minutes), saving travellers valuable time in their day.
Sir Richard Leese, HSR UK campaign chair, said: “We all need to switch off sometimes and give ourselves space to think. We’re bombarded with a constant stream of information, thanks to so many new technologies, but the results of our survey suggest that sometimes people want to be left alone.”
The new HSR\\UK campaign launched last month is a coalition of 11 of the UK’s major cities, including Edinburgh, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham and Cardiff, building support for a national high speed network, seeing both business and pleasure travellers getting to city destinations faster and more efficiently than any other form of land transport.
Operating at speeds of over 200 mph, journey times from all of the UK’s major cities would rapidly decrease following the introduction of HSR, giving passengers extra ‘me time’ when they travel with the network.
Sir Richard added: “During our survey almost everyone interviewed was looking forward to the clocks going back, regardless of what they chose to do with the extra hour. With the introduction of a high speed rail network, we’re hoping to give the British public back some of that ever elusive ‘me time’, by out performing every other mode of transport by getting passengers to their destinations faster and with minimum fuss.”
People in Europe are already able to enjoy more ‘me time’. At present the UK has only 68miles of high speed railway lines, there are 3,840 miles in operation in mainland Europe with a further 2,160 under construction.
The Eddington Transport Study – an examination of the impact of transport decisions on the environment and economy in the UK – has estimated that the potential carbon savings from transferring Scotland to London air passengers to HSR, could be 0.5 million tonnes per year.
According to a recent report the entire high speed network would have the capacity to accommodate 178million passengers every year. In addition, the report’s findings showed that HSR would attract around 30million passengers from domestic air travel, and a further 13million who tend to travel in and around the country by car.
So it seems, with the prospect of having an extra hour in the day, the majority of the UK’s population would use it to indulge themselves with ‘me time’. And with the coalition’s strong argument to introduce HSR to the UK, this once a year GMT luxury could become a daily privilege for those who choose to travel by High Speed Rail.
ENDS
Notes to editors
Survey carried out by Opinion Matters covered 1,231 adults spread across each of the 11 UK cities in the campaign.
High Speed Rail (HSR) is commonly defined as a railway capable of operating at 320km (200mph) and above, and is typically designed for passengers rather than freight. The first HSR line opened in Japan in 1964 and other countries followed quickly. Today France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Italy are just some of our European competitors with HSR networks. The UK’s first high-speed railway, HS1, linking London to the Channel Tunnel opened in November 2007 and is having a major impact on travel between the UK and continental Europe, cutting journey times between London and Paris to 2hr 15mins and between London and Brussels to 1hr 51min, whilst also helping to ease capacity constraints on London’s radial commuter rail network. Europe is now developing a network of high speed rail lines which allow for seamless journeys across Europe with co-ordinated ticketing and passenger services.
High Speed Rail capacity forecasts were included in the Greengauge21 – a not-for-profit organisation that aims to develop the concept of a high speed rail network and to promote its implementation as a national economic priority.