On Wed, 29 Jun 2016 13:11:47 +0100, Basil Jet
wrote:

On 2016\06\29 10:45, wrote:
In article , (tim...)
wrote:

the rest is a totally unnecessary vanity project

If High Speed Rail is a "vanity project" then why has most of the developed
world been adopting similar projects for decades?

Vanity? ;-)

Hardly. The Japanese high speed routes are now so busy that they are
starting to build even higher speed routes to supplement their early
Shinkansens with the maglev Chuo Shinkansen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen

But the French probably went too far. They've built most of the
sensible LGVs, but were then pushed by regional politicians to extend
them too much. Some of those planned extensions are now being
cancelled.