High Performance Rail (HPR) isn’t built around one number — top speed. It’s built around a set of choices about what a railway should actually do for the people and communities along its route. These are the ten principles behind it.
Why big rail projects almost always cost more and carry fewer riders than promised — and how to check a project’s numbers against the real-world record, not just its own promises. This chapter explains the method behind every number in this report. It’s based on the work of Bent Flyvbjerg, an Oxford researcher who has spent decades studying how big infrastructure projects around the world actually turn out, compared to what they promised.
The corridor genuinely needs better trains. What it got instead was a project that grew far beyond its original plan during procurement — and that can’t be fixed with tweaks, because its problems come from how it was chosen, not how it’s being built.
Why North America’s freight railways work the opposite way from Europe’s—and what that means for the passenger problem.
Pick the route first and the speed follows. Pick the speed first and the route picks itself — expensively.
Build beside a highway that already exists, or cut a new line through open country. That single choice sets the carbon, the habitat damage, the disruption during construction and the opposition — and it sets the cost too.
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