IN THE days Jimmy Savile claimed were the Age Of The Train, it was quicker to get from Edinburgh to London than it is now. Twenty years ago, the journey time was three hours 59 minutes. Today, the fastest the journey can be done is four hours 18 minutes, and many of the daily services take longer still. Indeed, it is fair to say that while Europe has pushed ahead with the development of high-speed rail, UK trains and their passengers have been left languishing in the slow lane.

A report published last month by engineering consultant Atkins offers a tantalising glimpse at how different things could be if the UK dusted off its plans for high-speed rail. The report, which examined line options up both the east (Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh) and the west (Heathrow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow) of the country claimed that journey times to Edinburgh would be cut to two hours 35 minutes, and Glasgow to three hours.

This is based on building TGV trains like the ones used on the Continent. They are not as fast as the magnetically charged Maglev trains that exist in China, but they are compatible with the UK's existing rail network so they have come to be seen as the more likely option.

High-speed rail (HSR) was last seriously mooted by the government as an option some five years ago and has since slipped in priority at Westminster. This was the result of a 2006 report by former British Airways chief executive Sir Rod Eddington, who recommended upgrading the existing track as a cheaper alternative.

But in a week where the Scottish Association for Public Transport (SAPT) set up a pressure group to campaign for a high-speed network, a Department for Transport spokesman confirms to the Sunday Herald: "Our immediate priority is increasing capacity on the rail network, with £10 billion to be invested in more trains and more capacity to meet passenger demand for rail travel."

He makes clear, however, the door for HSR is still very much ajar. "At the same time, we are planning for the future. Other organisations may come forward with future rail options and we welcome their input and will consider their work alongside that from elsewhere," he says.

One of the reasons for this willingness to rethink is that despite the ongoing improvements to the west and east coast mainlines, the railway network continues to suffer from a shortage of capacity. Over the past 10 years, passenger usage has grown 40%, on a rail network 40% smaller than that which existed in the 1950s (see chart).

Add to the mix soaring oil prices and a rising global interest in reducing carbon emissions and the case for high-speed rail is edging back on to the agenda. A coalition of business interests, transport groups and environmentalists is now being assembled to push the issue to the very top of the political agenda, spurred on by the Atkins report, which claims the economic benefit of such lines would be £63bn.

Such gains would be possible in part because of the impact from freeing up the existing network for commuters and freight once long-distance travellers were moved across to high-speed lines. Adding these gains into the economic assessment strengthens the case for high-speed rail, according to campaigners.

The Scottish case More local routes could also potentially boost the coffers of rail companies, including Scottish-headquartered Stagecoach and FirstGroup, who operate the regional franchises, as they would be free to offer more routes and trains to local passengers, once long-distance trains have been switched to high-speed lines.

"The UK's large conurbations all suffer from congestion. Solving congestion problems for commuters and business users in a sustainable way is the main priority for transport policy," said the Atkins report, which calculates that the productivity gains to the Scottish economy would be worth £7.3bn. It continued: "Alternative ways to improve wider accessibility through enhancements to road and air networks seem unlikely to achieve equivalent benefits."

The Scottish government is currently carrying out a strategic transport projects review to assess Scotland's transport priorities for 2012-2022. As part of this review, the Scottish government will look at electrifying the lines north of Edinburgh and Glasgow, which would bring down journey times within Scotland. However, transport minister Stewart Stevenson's spokesman says this review will not examine how local infrastructure could be redeployed if high-speed lines were built, as called for in the Atkins report.

The spokesman pointed out that while the government was in favour of high-speed rail, the link between London and Scotland was a matter for the Westminster parliament. Stevenson has written to the parliamentary under-secretary of state for transport, Tom Harris, requesting a meeting to discuss high-speed rail lines.

Stewart Stevenson's spokesman says: "Cross-border rail links are of prime economic importance and they are critical in offering access and connections to other parts of the UK and to Europe."

At the time of writing, Stevenson had yet to hear back from Harris, although since the Westminster government has confirmed it is open to the idea, it would appear they will have much to discuss.

The business case It is hard to find anyone representing Scotland's business interests who is not in favour of HSR. CBI Scotland's policy executive, Iain Ferguson, is among those urging action. He says: "Transport problems are harming our economy. Scots business travellers need fast and reliable air and rail links to London and high-speed rail certainly has a role to play."

The call for reliability is unlikely to meet with much dissent so soon after the flights cancellation fiasco at Heathrow's Terminal 5. Indeed the past month has also witnessed massive disruption to both existing air and rail routes to London. Bad weather forced the cancellation of 19 flights and many more delays between Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh airports and London in a single day. More recently, there was serious disruption to the both the west and east coast mainlines.

Owen Kelly, chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise, says: "Connectivity to London is absolutely essential to the continued success of Scotland's financial services industry.

"The high-speed rail link between London and Paris has shown the potential, and you can't help comparing that with the service we currently have in the UK the 298 miles from London to Paris takes two hours and 20 minutes, compared to four hours 18 minutes for the 332 miles from London to Edinburgh."

High-speed rail lines could also help boost Scotland's tourist industry, currently worth £4.1bn to the economy. Research carried out for VisitScotland found that good transport links were cited by some 58% of potential leisure visitors as being an important factor in their choice of holiday destination. Some 83% of visitors to Scotland in 2006 came from within the UK, indicating that there is much to be gained with our main target tourism market from having faster trains.

As Philip Riddle, VisitScotland's chief executive, says: "London and the southeast of England are key markets for us, particularly as we work towards our shared tourism industry ambition of creating an industry worth in excess of £6bn by 2015, and one of the challenges we face is convincing them that Scotland is quick and easy to get to.

"We believe that access to Scotland is already good, but to improve the service and introduce a high-speed connection would certainly bring benefits for Scottish tourism."

Indeed so strong is the support from business interests that Dr John McCormick, chairman of SAPT and the driving force behind the provisionally named FastTrack North pressure group, believes it could be political suicide for the UK government to fail to act.

He told the Sunday Herald: "We want to make this a key issue at the next general election. I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago and I met the Conservative shadow minister for transport, Stephen Hammond, and he seemed really interested in high-speed rail. So it could be a case of if this government won't act, just wait for the next one to get things moving."

The environmental case McCormick argues that high-speed rail routes are essential if the government is to keep to its promise to reduce CO2 emissions. The Rail 2007 white paper says that about 130g to 140g of CO2 is saved every time a passenger switches a journey from plane to train. At present about 23% of the UK total CO2 emissions comes from transport, although just 2% of that total comes from rail.

Atkins cites the example from the upgraded west coast main line between London and Manchester as evidence that when rail journey times come down, there is a shift from air to rail (according to Virgin Trains, there was a 96% increase in rail passengers from Manchester to London in 2005 after the upgrade, while flights on the route fell 6%).

This is lent further support by the experience of the Ave high-speed line between Madrid and Seville in Spain. Since the journey time was cut to two hours and 30 minutes, reducing it by more than two hours, a massive 80% of travellers opt for train over plane.

According to the Scottish government, between April 2006 to March 2007, 1.2 million passengers made rail journeys between Scotland and London, while almost four million travelled by air. If a shift along the lines of that experienced in Spain took place, more than three million of those air journeys could be transferred on to rail, saving something in the region of 400,000kg of CO2 each year.

The call for building the line is lent further support by those campaigning against a third runway at Heathrow, even though the proposed route for the west coast line would see a stop at Heathrow airport.

Hacan (Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise), an action group formed by local residents, points out that almost 20% (100,000 flights) of Heathrow current flights are domestic, or journeys that could easily be replaced by high-speed rail.

John Stewart, chairman of HACAN Clearskies, told the Sunday Herald: "We are lagging behind France and Germany, and where high-speed rail has been introduced in other parts of Europe it has cut down or eliminated domestic flights, so we see it as very much part of the answer to not expanding Heathrow."

Costs and Timing If there are 101 good reasons for building a HSR network as soon as possible, it should not be surprising that the rub might be money. It is estimated that it would actually be cheaper to build the west coast portion of the HSR than a third Heathrow runway, at £9bn against £13bn, but while the latter would be private money the former would initially come from the public purse. And when you throw in the longer and more expensive east coast line, Atkins estimates a total bill of £31bn. Little wonder the UK government kicked it into the long grass.

Here too, though, it seems there might be room for a plea in mitigation. For one thing, Andy Southern, managing director of Atkins's transport planning division, told the Sunday Herald that there was scope to bring down costs.

"There are guidelines you have to use when calculating costs, and with the new planning process coming in there would be scope to look seriously at how you could minimise cost without jeopardising the project," he says, in reference to previous observations by the Commission for Integrated Transport that the government was budgeting for far higher legal, planning and project management costs than that, say, of the Spanish HSR system.

There are also those arguing the case for thinking outside the box. The UK Department of Transport has looked at methods used in other countries, including Taiwan, which sold off land along its high-speed route for development.

Meanwhile in the US, several cities' administrations have sold the rights to build, maintain and operate major infrastructure projects. Infrastructure funds for retail investors are some of the fastest growing in the UK, and many already own chunks of rail projects both within and outside the UK.

One final possibility could be the National Lottery. Having already used it to part-fund the Olympics, the government could choose to change the rules and allow it for a project like HSR.

Whether or not one of these kinds of options is used, the momentum certainly seems to be moving at least towards fully costing out HSR. If FastTrack North succeeds in galvanising cross-party support for the project and the Atkins £63bn economic benefit figure proves correct, then the money for the project may well be found.

If that happens, then perhaps in 20 years, rail travellers can look forward to much faster Edinburgh to London journey times. There might yet be light at the end of the tunnel after all.