This is not going to be the case with all cities for example journey times to Scotland could be reached for much less. With using tilting trains on the East Coast and upgrading to 140 mph running the journey time from London to Edinburgh would actually be marginally faster than using HS2. [1] The figures for the journey savings notably exclude the possibility of faster journeys on the existing routes so the savings would not be as big. [2] Because Britain’s big cities are not particularly far apart journey times are already not long by comparison to many countries. Trains from London to the second city of Manchester take just over two hours, because of the much longer distance from Paris to France’s second city even with the TGV the journey time is about the same while from Tokyo to Osaka takes 2hours 25 minutes.  [1] Webb, Jonathan, ‘East Coast Pendolinos could deliver faster journey times than HS2 for Anglo-Scottish services’, Global Rail News, 2 August 2013,   [2] Millward, David, ‘HS2 time savings exaggerated critics say’, The Telegraph, 29 October 2013,