The Conservatives' £15bn commitment to build new high-speed rail links in the UK if they are elected is "campaigning nonsense", according to experts speaking at an engineering conference in London.
"They plan to take £1.3bn out of the existing rail budget for 12 years in order to build it," said Christian Wolmar, writer and broadcaster on the UK's transport system. "That would significantly damage the existing infrastructure."
London School of Economics lecturer Dr Tim Leunig branded the Conservatives' plans a campaigning nonsense, saying that it would cost at least £11bn to build a London to Birmingham connection and that high-speed rail would only have success on a very limited number of routes.
"We have missed the boat for high-speed rail," he said. "The UK doesn't do big projects like that very well."
But Jim Steer, founder of Greengauge21, a not-for-profit organisation researching the benefits of high-speed rail, argued against this.
"We haven't missed the boat," he said. "We are now getting the political support we need and it is a very real prospect."
He added that the business case for high-speed rail was "thunderingly good" and out of all the options for increasing the UK's transport capacity it would result in the best economic returns.
Wolmer did concede that as trains carry on average three times more passengers than aircraft used for short-haul flights, if capacity were to dramatically increase it may ease congestion, but that could not be predicted and would only be clear in ten to 15 years time.
By Natalie Coomber
