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Science | Design & Technology

Trains ‘to replace planes’ within 20 years

Are they the future of travel? Britain, yesterday, announced its new railway. Meanwhile, engineers are designing “space travel on Earth” to replace planes with clean, super-fast trains., Imagine stepping through steam and smoke on to the first train in Manchester, 190 years ago. You thought travelling by horse and coach was fast, but now you’re sitting in a carriage propelled by steam-power, hurtling towards Liverpool at a frightening 30 mph! The wind in your face, the thunder of wheels and pistons. This is the future! Flash-forward to 2020 and the UK, yesterday, gave the green light to the new HS2 trains. Running between London and Manchester at 224 mph, they will be the fastest in Europe. Critics say it will destroy the countryside, cost a fortune, and take forever to finish. Boris Johnson says we must look to the future and “dream big dreams”. During the Industrial Revolution, steam-powered trains catapulted us into the modern age. They shrank the world, connecting far-flung cities and reducing journeys from days to hours. But in the 20th Century, car and air travel left trains lagging behind. Until now. Many think trains are due a comeback. Our roads are jammed with traffic and the skies clogged with the CO2 emissions from the 250,000 flights made every day. We need greener and faster ways to get from A to B. “Trains are humanity’s best bet to replace planes. If we are ambitious, we can do this within 20 years,” said one expert yesterday. Some of the ideas will, literally, take your breath away. The AeroSlider aims to replace intercontinental flights, darting through magnetic hoops at 500 mph. Suspended above the ground, trains as long as three football pitches would be like “moving buildings”, complete with offices, parks and gyms. Too slow? The fastest trains currently use magnetic levitation to reduce friction. But to go even faster, engineers are designing vacuum tunnels with all the air sucked out. Like underground spaceships, these trains could cross the Atlantic in one hour at 2500 mph. Because of the time zone difference, they would arrive four hours before they set off. These trains won’t come cheap, but it’s not just the money people are worried about. The faster we travel, the harder it is to turn corners and the more time it takes to stop. This is great news if you live in a megacity, but could leave the rest of us feeling less rather than more connected. So, are trains the future? Loco Of course not, moan the critics. This obsession with speed and everything bigger, better and faster, is what got us into the climate crisis we are now in. Do we need to travel quite so much? Instead of finding ways to get to the next city 20 minutes quicker, we should focus on how to live greener, happier, and maybe even slower lives in the city where we live. How uninspiring, others say. From Stephenson’s Rocket to the Tokyo Bullet Train, locomotives are about inspirational invention and the romance of train travel. We must ditch cars and planes in the next 20 years if we are to meet targets for reduced CO2 emissions, and it will take big and bold ideas to make this happen. With congested roads and stretched rail services, the time to “level up” is long overdue. KeywordsCO2 emissions - When a gas is let off from something, like a car, it is an emission. Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

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