In Time Travel I suggested that going faster doesn't necessarily save time.
Here are some sums.
The proposed HS2 from London to Birmingham should save about 35 minutes
The estimated cost of Phase 1 is £16.3bn at 2011 prices
The average rate of pay in the UK in 2012 was about £12 per hour
In the summer of 2012 there were 29.59 million people in employment
Therefore the total hourly earnings were about £355 million (29.59 million x £12)
To earn £16.3bn we'd all have to work for 46 hours (16.3 billion / 355 million)
That's the saving from about 79 single trips each (46 hours/35 mins) but at no extra cost
Because earning even more money would take even more time.
By 2043 it's estimated that the route would carry 136000 passengers per day.
To get our time back we'd have to make a total of about 2.3 billion journeys (29.59 million x 79)
It would take 16900 days for us to take these journeys (2.3 billion/136000)
Or just over 46 years (16900/365)
So we're unlikely to get the time back but we might see it whizz by.
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