Aim to end domestic flights
The UK Government is planning as national high speed rail network with the long term aim of ending domestic air travel.
Lord Adonis, the British transport secretary, said plans for a new network were "well advanced."
He confirmed, as reported in ABTN in May, that High Speed Two, a company set up by the government in January, would report on a route from London to the West Midlands by the end of the year
The company will also report on corridor options to extend the route to the north-west, West Yorkshire, the north-east and the central Scotland.
This would take in cities including Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
He said in an interview with a UK national newspaper The Guardian, that it was "manifestly in the public interest" to switch 46m annual domestic air passengers onto a high speed north to south rail service.
He was quoted as saying: For reasons of carbon reductions and wider environmental benefits, it is manifestly in the public interest that we systematically replace short haul aviation with high speed rail.
"But we would have to have, of course, the high speed network before we do it."
Lord Adonis said the London-Birmingham line could be built by 2020 and the £7bn funding shared by the public purse and private investment.
The minister said he would also seek cross party support for the high speed network.
He also told The Guardian that he wanted to see "short haul aviation - not just domestic aviation - progressively replaced by rail including high speed rail.
"If we want to see this progressive replacement then we have got to have a high speed rail system that links our major conurbations and makes them far more accessible to Europe, too."
Lord Adonis told the UK National rail conference in May: "We intend to consider the report (from High Speed Two) immediately after its receipt, and to consult the other political parties upon it, with a view to indicating a definite way forward in the early part of 2010.
"The decision we take - on whether, and how, to proceed - will be the most important transport decision we take over the next year."
www.dft.gov.uk