Early next year, the government will decide how to proceed with plans for a new high-speed rail line from London to the West Midlands, with options for further extensions to the north-west, north-east and central Scotland. It will be the most significant and far-reaching transport decision we make over the next 12 months and a decision of historic importance for Britain’s railways.

Until recently, most people in Britain associated high-speed rail with Japan or France. As our railway declined in the 1980s and 1990s, French TGVs and Japanese bullet trains gave us a glimpse of what could be achieved by countries willing to embrace new technologies and progressive transport policies to transform intercity rail services.

Our one engagement with high-speed rail – the Channel Tunnel Rail Link – was conceived as a project largely separate from the existing rail network. By contrast, the French from the outset saw high-speed rail as the beginning of a project for a national network of high-speed lines and services. 

Other countries followed. Today, 3,600 miles of high speed line are in operation throughout Europe, with 2,000 miles under construction, and 5,300 more miles planned for the future. Even President Obama has put high-speed rail firmly on the Washington policy map with a major stimulus package, following the successful Californian ballot last November for a $10bn bond to start work on a San Francisco to Los Angeles line.

It is time that Britain – the country that invented the railway – regained the initiative in developing a railway to meet the demands of this century. That is why in January, we set up a new company – High Speed 2 – to study the London/West Midlands case in detail, to advise on a longer-term network, and to report back by the end of 2009. Our final decision will be based on that report.

Strategically, the time is right to move ahead with high-speed rail. Britain’s railways have undergone a remarkable renaissance in recent years, and long-term demand for fast, reliable inter-urban transport is projected to continue growing. Passenger numbers are more than 50% higher than a decade ago.

We need to engage systematically with the experience of countries making a success of high-speed rail so we can learn from them. In recent months I have been to study the rail modernisation programmes of Japan, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, and to assess the contribution that high-speed services are making to those programmes.
 
In countries with established networks, high-speed lines have slashed journey times and attracted substantial numbers of new passengers. They have boosted capacity and provided much greater flexibility to cope with the full range of demands from commuter, freight and intercity services.

In Europe, as successive lines develop, they become inter-operable with existing lines and the networks of neighbouring countries. They encourage modal shift by getting people out of cars and planes, and so help to reduce transport’s overall carbon footprint. In short, country by country, high-speed rail not only offers a better, faster means of transport, but also becomes a key driver of economic, environmental and social modernisation.

Although there is a high price involved in building high-speed lines, there is also a high price in not building them where additional rail capacity is required anyway. We need to factor in lost economic and social benefits, and consider the direct and substantial cost of upgrading existing congested rail lines.

Let no one be in any doubt: proceeding with high-speed rail will be a great challenge both on a political level, and in terms of planning and engineering. Considerable imagination and ingenuity will be needed – on a par with the imagination and ingenuity which built Britain’s first railways. But I am confident we can rise to these challenges, and deliver a high-speed rail network that will benefit not just our transport system, but also our economy, our environment, and our society for decades to come.