How excited can you get over HS2? On a scale from: ‘so what?’ to ‘oh, a new train; wake me up when something interesting happens’. Estimates for this project range from £60billion to infinity. And beyond. But worst of all; it won’t be completed until 2030. Which, allowing for delays, legal issues, union business, the deportation of most of the work force when Farage becomes Prime Minister in 2024, probably 2050 by the time the first High Speed (2) trains start their official delays. Its Hinkley Point all over again. You’re building something that will be obsolete by the time its finished. If it gets finished. Its a government, infrastructure vanity project. Which is fine, we need those for jobs and morale. But do something better. Piss away our money on things we can get excited about.

Like Boom jets. They look like Concorde, they smell like Concorde (aviation fuel does that), they have long noses, like Concorde, they don’t take many passengers, like Concorde, but they’re fast. Wonderfully, unashamedly, obscenely, carbon emittingly fast. New York in 3hrs (and 15minutes if we’re being pedantic, and we should, we really should). LA to Sydney, 6.5 hours instead of the current 15. That’s almost as wonderful as cutting half an hour off the journey from Stoke to Newport Pagnell, as long as there’s no leaves on the track.

Boom is the company and Virgin are their main investors. Not sure they’ll ever make any money, just like Concorde, but at least its hi-tech and the French aren’t involved. Because the plane will only take 40 passengers. Seated in single rows so they can all ‘look out of the windows’. Like they have a choice? Concorde took 100 at a time and made a year-on-year loss, think how much this can lose? The potential is limitless. But let me know when it reaches 60 billion quid and I’ll start to worry on Branson’s behalf and do the ‘I told you so’ thing about HS2.

So it won’t be cheap to fly. And its all about weight. To fly at 1400mph (100mph faster than Concorde) the plane is made of carbon fibre instead of aluminium, to cut the weight. Fat people will be banned from using it. I made that up. Obviously they won’t be as that would be discriminatory against Americans. Not sure what they’ll do about luggage, maybe send it later by HS2. So you arrive in New York 2 hours before you left London (time change effect) but your bags arrive Thursday week.

I’m not suggesting that the millions of people using trains every week shouldn’t have a better experience. I’m just not convinced HS2 will provide anything different. Build a Superloop; the technology is there. Build something for the future. This is no longer the year 1876. Robert Stephenson is dead. Get over it.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx