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(CNN) -
The romance of train travel has seduced many travelers over the years.
Sitting on a train as it glides silently out of a city, along tunnels and viaducts, glimpsing people's backyards before rolling through the open country is one of life's true joys.
It's a love story that began in Britain, when pioneering steam trains offered speed and comfort by connecting the country's great urban centers to its farthest corners, and then quickly spread around the world.
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Yet while rail passions continue to rage in Asian and European countries, with investment in high-speed networks cementing its place as the future of sustainable transport, in the UK the relationship appears less than healthy.
It's no secret that things have been stagnant for a while.
There are sure to be good days when punctual services bring happy passengers to their destinations.
But there are too many bad days of complaints, overcrowding, cancellations, delays and price hikes, especially in the north of England.
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In part, that's why the latest news on HS2, a railway line under construction designed to offer a dedicated high-speed link between London and Birmingham, the UK's second-largest city, and the densely populated urban regions further north , they have caused so much discomfort.
An amputation
HS2 tunnels under construction in North West London.
Leon Neal / Getty Images
HS2 was originally conceived as a Y-shaped network that, once in Birmingham, would branch from left to right into the cities of Manchester and Leeds, spanning both sides of the country.
Now the eastern arm of the road has been amputated.
HS2 was already controversial, raising objections from communities ruined by its construction, environmentalists trying to save ancient forests that stand in its way, and others arguing that an estimated £ 88bn (US $ 118bn) is a steep price for travel. marginally faster.
But the UK government sold the project to voters as an opportunity to "level up" disadvantaged post-industrial areas in the central and northern regions through investment in improved infrastructure to create "northern powers."
Then the ax fell.
Just days after it organized the COP26 climate agreement in Glasgow, the government scrapped a large part of a project that was one of the pillars of its own decarbonisation strategy.
And instead of ambitious goals to reconnect abandoned parts of the country with new high-speed lines, it now promised to simply upgrade existing lines that date back to the 19th century.
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In another controversial decision, the government last month announced a 50% reduction in air passenger tariffs for internal flights, a measure deemed detrimental to train travel.
Incandescent politicians, business leaders and regional media lined up to criticize the cuts, which came after months of leaks that contradicted Prime Minister Boris Johnson's promises that the HS2 line would be built in its entirety.
The cuts were announced by UK Transport Minister Grant Shapps as part of a $ 129 billion plan he described as the "largest investment ever made in British railways", a claim quickly attacked by critics, including lawmakers. of Johnson's ruling Conservative Party.
Among them is Terence O'Neill, a former Conservative government minister who now sits in the upper parliamentary chamber of the House of Lords and vice chairman of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership group of politicians and business leaders from across the north of England.
"The government has managed to disappoint practically everyone," he said in a television interview with Sky News.
"It's chaotic. Who would have thought that announcing a work package close to £ 100bn could go down so badly?
"They have talked 60 to 70 times about handing over Northern Powerhouse Rail in its entirety and cut their money. Even in Manchester, where we are still getting HS2, we don't have a new station or better connections to Leeds."
East-west division
The HS2 project costs $ 118 billion, but not everyone is convinced that it is worth the money.
Leon Neal / Getty Images
Critics noted that much of the money had been announced before or represented revived projects previously canceled by the Conservatives.
Some said the investment was simply inadequate to meet climate change goals that required radical changes in travel habits.
Of the $ 129 billion total, almost half has already been accounted for for spending on the HS2 line between London and Birmingham, in addition to its left-hand extension to the town of Crewe, a rail crossing in central England.
A further US $ 22.6 billion was earmarked for the new line to Manchester and connections to the existing UK West Coast Main Line, allowing for faster connections to North West cities, North Wales and Scotland for the decade 2030.
Meanwhile, on the eastern side of the country, the right side of the HS2 line will be replaced by an amputated stump that depletes somewhere near Nottingham, leaving large swaths of territory without improved connection services.
Some fear that such cost cutting could create a new east-west divide in England to rival the already marked economic divide between north and south.
The combined counties of Yorkshire, in the northeast of England, will receive just two miles of new rail.
To sweeten the deal, the government has promised future investments in improving the road linking the northern cities of York, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool to increase speed and capacity, as well as electrifying the links between London and Nottingham. and Sheffield and track improvements on the country's East Coast Main Line.
While these valuable schemes could partially offset the cuts, lead times still extend into the 2040s and will still need to get funding approval - a notoriously difficult challenge for large infrastructure projects.
Unlike the London-Manchester route, where HS2 trains will move from city to city on entirely new lines at speeds of up to 400km / h, services to the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the North East will have to run at only half of that speed - and often much less - to reach their destinations.
While travel times will still be significantly reduced, high-speed trains will have to compete for track space with existing intercity trains, regional services, and slow freight on lines that are already struggling to cope with the congestion.
Sacrificing stations
Environmental activists have built protest camps at points along the HS2 route.
Peter Summers / Getty Images
According to rail engineer and commentator Gareth Dennis, the new plans undermine HS2's original goal of segregating long-distance high-speed lines to free up capacity for more regional and local services.
It's a development, he says, that "threatens the biggest cuts to local rail services since the 1960s."
The downgrade of the proposed Northern Powerhouse Rail project is likely to undermine the goals of reducing congestion and stimulating regional economies.
It will leave millions of people relying on gradual improvements to the Victorian railways and cast doubt on the prime minister's commitment to his flagship policy of "leveling off."
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"The impact on the city of Leeds, for example, cannot be underestimated," adds Dennis.
"Where previously we expected new high-speed platforms to free up space for more local services running east to west, now we have nothing."
"Where we previously had the potential for London-style tube services over the Pennines to Manchester and anywhere in between, we will have a reduction in local services to accommodate long-distance trains."
"Where Leeds should have had high-speed services to Sheffield, Bradford and Manchester via new lines, these routes will now be less reliable as they are combined with local services and will likely require local services and perhaps some stations will be sacrificed. It is nothing. less than a betrayal. "
The overcoming of the historic divide in living standards, economic output and productivity between the prosperous south-east of England and the north has been likened by some to the efforts needed to reunify Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Over the past 30 years, Germany has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in new roads, railways and other infrastructure to try to bridge the gap between the former communist eastern states and their wealthier western neighbors.
HS2 protests like this one near London's Euston station have erupted along the line's route.
TOLGA AKMEN / AFP via Getty Images
Spending on public transport in England has long been an example of the disparity between London and the regions.
Annual investment is over US $ 1,330 per capita in the capital, compared to about a third for Yorkshire and North East England.
The East Midlands fare even worse with a per capita investment of just a quarter of the total enjoyed in London.
HS2 was expected to be the catalyst to turn this around, with the most obvious uptick felt in the big city regions outside of the capital.
His supporters hope the fierce backlash against the government's new plans will force a policy change.
However, given the scale of investment required to deliver the plans in full at a time when the cost of dealing with Covid-19 and delivering the UK's Brexit from Europe is increasing, it seems unlikely.
More congestion
The Boris Johnson government has been sued for 'treason' after it abandoned its original rail expansion plan.
Nathan Stirk / Getty Images
Until the pandemic, the most pressing issue for British railways was coping with growing demand: trying to run more and more trains on a network dating much of the 19th century was having a detrimental effect on reliability and punctuality.
The tracks and trains were showing their age, and unlike many other railroads in Europe, Asia and North America, it is not possible to add additional seats with longer or double-decker trains due to limitations of the old infrastructure.
For the British rail industry, building HS2 in its entirety was the key to unlocking huge additional passenger and cargo capacity.
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In its previous form, the Y-shaped HS2 network would have relieved the three main routes from London to the north of England and Scotland: the west coast, the east coast, and the main Midland lines. Without the east leg, it largely becomes a detour for the first and potentially creates more congestion on the other two.
While UK railways are undoubtedly successful in many areas, including having the best safety record in Europe over the last decade, they are widely regarded as costly and inefficient compared to similar networks in continental Europe.
The costs of upgrades, such as electrification, are three times higher than the average in other parts of the world, and the inability to deliver major projects on time or on budget is a constant concern.
Many of the problems that are being experienced are not unique to Britain.
Congestion, overcrowding, dilapidated infrastructure from the 19th century, and climate change have an effect on costs and reliability, even in countries like Switzerland and Germany.
Repairing and upgrading the network is an expensive business, especially at a time when covid-era commuter travel patterns threaten the base of season ticket revenue that has propped up the passenger rail for more than a century. .
Period of uncertainty
The government has promised to improve rail services in the north.
Christopher Furlong / Getty Images
However, after a traumatic schedule collapse that exposed systemic weaknesses in the British rail industry in 2018, the collapse in passenger numbers due to Covid-19 finally did away with a flawed franchise model that has seen private companies operate services. passengers since the mid-1990s.
In the past two years, the UK government has effectively renationalised its rail system, reluctantly spending up to $ 1.3 billion a month to prop up struggling operators.
Once again, the country that gave the world's railways is facing a period of uncertainty as its passenger rail industry reorganizes itself from the top down for the fifth time in a century.
It seems unlikely that the widespread outrage over the HS2 reduction in November will dissipate quickly, but whether it will lead to a rethink remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Britain's now rivals in the European Union are accelerating investment in new subways, high-capacity regional networks and high-speed lines that will be the backbone of their economies for the next century.
Despite all the complaints about its trains, Britain retains a great fondness for railways and many know that they must play a central role in the country's fight against climate change.
It is possible that, at some point in the future, the romance will be rekindled.