不久前刚刚访问中国的伦敦市长鲍里斯•约翰逊昨天在英国《每日电讯报》发表文章回忆自己在华乘坐高铁的经历，敦促英国国内早点就修建高铁计划达成共识。
伦敦市长鲍里斯·约翰逊乘坐中国高铁，在列车上陷入了深深的思考
英国政府2012年计划斥资327亿英镑修建一条连接伦敦、伯明翰及北部城市的高铁线路“HS2”。英国政府预计，一期工程“伦敦至伯明翰线”将于2026年建成，投资额约为170亿英镑，届时伦敦到伯明翰的时间将从1个半小时缩短到49分钟。二期工程“曼城、利兹及西斯罗机场延线”将于2033年落成。高速铁路建成后，可以节省民众和商务人士的时间成本，每年为英国节约上百亿英镑。英国也可以借此赶上世界发展高铁的潮流，避免被其他国家落在后面。
这一计划虽受到商界人士和工会的支持，但遭到沿线居民团体、地方议会以及环保组织的抗议，甚至包括威尔士事务大臣谢里尔•吉兰在内的政府官员也因为考虑到选民的反弹，对此计划颇有微词。遭到各方反对的高铁迟迟未能动工。这让鲍里斯•约翰逊感到不满，他在《每日电讯报》上发表文章称中国修建高铁的效率很高。
英国政府计划修建的HS2高速铁路线因为种种原因迟迟未能开工
以下是鲍里斯•约翰逊在《每日电讯报》专栏上文章的节选翻译：
我在中国乘坐高铁的经历中有很多令人吃惊的事情，它的速度要比最快的马萨拉蒂跑车还要快，它飞驰在田野上，能看到戴着草帽的农民星星点点，它穿越高山，一座座新城由近而远。坐在车上的噪音或震动甚至没有一只猫咪发出的咕噜声来的巨大——但这还不是中国高铁最惊奇的地方。
令人惊讶的并不是高铁的速度、安静和舒适，而是我们的中国朋友在我2006年去中国之后的短时间内修建整条高铁的效率。他们修建了813英里长的京沪高铁，像步枪枪管一样笔直，沿途还有那么多新火车站，那里的厅堂如此洁净——这一切一共花了多长时间?两年!而两年的时间我们在HS2高铁上做了些什么?我们花了数亿英镑来进行各种规划、咨询，但没有铺下一根铁轨。
中国的京沪高铁2008年4月18日正式开工，2011年6月30日通车
两年！
在我们庞大的基础设施建设工程中，这一段时间刚够用来进行第一次环境影响评价咨询会议。然后将会有许多影响评价和评判重申和上诉，规划调查和各种哈欠连篇的讨价还价舒适地持续上十年甚至更久的时间。这就是我们无法办到中国两年之内所做的事情的原因。
如果我们对于面对我国的基础设施建设需求还抱有一线希望的话，我们首先需要认识到问题的严重性——随着本世纪中叶英国将人口增长并超过8000万，我们需要从现在开始就用高效环保的方式规划大部分问题使他们有所居，提供它们生活需要的公共卫生与能源，而首先，我们要给予它们快速在国内经济发展地区间快速交通的能力。
随后鲍里斯抱怨了英国工党在高铁建设上的“破坏性”努力，并表示不能容忍工党让英国高铁“脱轨”。
翻页可阅读鲍里斯•约翰逊在《每日电讯报》专栏文章《中国用了两年造了它的HS2，别让工党让我们出轨》英文原文。
There were quite a few amazing things about the high-speed train I took the other day in China. It went faster than the fastest Maserati ever made, and it shot through fields dotted with stooping straw-hatted peasants and it zoomed past high mountains and sprouting new cities and it emitted no more noise or vibration than a purring cat – but that wasn’t the truly extraordinary thing about the route.
It wasn’t the speed or the silence or the comfort or the supply of hot towels. It was the fact that our Chinese friends had built the whole darned thing since I had been there last, in 2006. They made the entire 813-mile track from Beijing to Shanghai, rifle-barrel straight, with umpteen gorgeous new marbled stations, with concourses so clean you could use them to gobble your dim sum – and how long did it take them? It took two years! Two years, amigos. That is how long we have already been gassing away about HS2, a period in which we have spent literally hundreds of millions of pounds on drawings and consultants and planning and what have you – and not laid so much as a rail.
Two years!
That is the kind of period we set aside, in our big infrastructure projects, for the first consultation on the environmental impact assessment. And then there will be the equalities impact assessments and the judicial reviews and the appeals and the planning inquiries and the whole spine-cracking yawnathon that will comfortably soak up a decade or more in which we fail to achieve what the Chinese have done in two years.
If we are to have any hope of meeting the infrastructure needs of this country we need first to recognise the severity of the problem – that with a population set to grow to about 80 million by the middle of the century, we need to plan now for the most effective and environmentally sensitive way of housing this population, of providing them with sanitation and power, and above all of enabling them to move speedily between the great wealth-creating zones of this country.
One way or the other, we are going to need HS2, and it is a total disgrace that the Labour Party is now playing politics with the scheme. They are shamelessly courting the sceptic vote – feigning support but unofficially signalling that a Labour government would pull the plug. Ed Balls has said that the case has yet to be made out – even though he went into the last election with HS2 in his manifesto.
Alistair Darling has said it is a “disaster”. Peter Mandelson now claims the whole thing was nothing but an electoral gimmick and should be junked. And you can see why Labour is so tempted, and why they have played this card. They have an economic credibility problem. They are going to have to persuade the electorate that they have some big and unexpected source of funding that will enable them to fulfil all their promises – to cut your fuel bills and plump your pension and subsidise the minimum wage – and the answer is always going to be HS2.
They can also see that the Tories are facing a revolt from those on the route, and from those who aren’t convinced that the scheme represents a good use of public money. Their objective is to make the project politically toxic with a drip, drip, drip of cold water, in a kind of chemical reaction: HS2 + H2O = H2SO4. They hope that continuing anxieties about noise and property prices will cost the Tories votes in key marginals. They are fomenting general hostility to the scheme, and, in particular, they are supporting those who say that investment in HS2 means diverting crucial spending from other parts of the railway network – and there I believe they are talking more nonsense than ever.
This was exactly the case that was made to me, more than five years ago, when the economic crash first happened and we were about to commit to spending £16 billion on Crossrail. It was mad, people said, to build a whole new railway under London when the rest of the Tube network was in urgent need of repair, when we were still using bakelite signalling on the District line and when funds were so desperately short. I remember a passionate denunciation of the scheme from one distinguished transport executive. “Why would you buy a shiny new car and park in front of the house, when the house is falling down?” he asked me.
Well, I think he was wrong then, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he agreed that he looks even more wrong now. We have not only got on with delivering Crossrail – absolutely vital to increase capacity on the London rail network. We have upgraded the Tube as well. We have cut delays by 40 per cent over the last five years, to pick a period entirely at random, and we are going on with a programme of improvements – with new signalling and automation – that will cut delays by a further 30 per cent.
It is now absolutely clear that this decision was right, because the population of London has risen by about half a million in the same period, and is likely to keep rising for the next couple of decades. Without these investments, our public transport system would have rapidly exploded with the strain. Britain has the potential to be the biggest economy in Europe, both in population and output, in our lifetimes; but we simply will not be able to cope, or to give business the platform it needs, if we fail to invest in infrastructure. We need a new supersewer under London, we need a new hub airport, and we need to increase our rail capacity.
There was a time when people like Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair would have recognised this. It is deeply regrettable that the current Labour Party leadership should be so opportunistic and short-sighted as to pussyfoot around about HS2. They are putting short-term tactics before the long-term needs of Britain, and they will not succeed. In 2015 the choice is going to be clear: between fool’s gold, and a Conservative programme for investment and long-term growth.
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