Outlook: Cut-price rail link would be worse than nothing

On the basis that half a Channel Tunnel Rail Link is better than none at all, Railtrack has come up with a cut-price answer to John Prescott's dreams. It is offering to build the link and open it on time in 2003 for just pounds 1.4bn. This is a third of the capital cost estimated by London & Continental Railways before its plans hit the buffers with a nasty bang.

There is only one snag. Railtrack's high speed line will link Paris and Brussels, not with the centre of London but with a hamlet in the north Kent countryside called Southfleet. From there, Eurostar passengers will complete the journey in more stately fashion, travelling on existing track to Waterloo International, not a gleaming new terminus at St Pancras.

The beauty of the scheme for a cash-strapped Government is its modest cost. Without the expensive business of having to tunnel under central London, Railtrack reckons it can build the link with perhaps just a third of the pounds 1.2bn LCR originally asked for until it came back and doubled its estimate of the amount of public subsidy needed.

But unless Mr Prescott is desperate, which for all we know he may well be after his dowsing at the Brit Awards, he will have no difficulty dismissing the scheme, which has more holes in it than a Eurostar traffic forecast. First, the cut-price link would shave just 15 minutes off the journey time to Paris.

That is neither enough to give Eurostar a decisive edge over the airlines, nor a smart use of pounds 1.4bn or whatever the final bill would come to with rolled up financing costs.

Second, the shortened link would not provide the increase in capacity for South East commuter services that is an integral part of the full- blown version. Third, it would not free up existing rail capacity in the south east, so there would be no chance of getting more freight off the road and on to rail. Nor, finally, would a high-speed link that ended at Southfleet be much use for all those who would some day like Eurostar services to run north of London.

Since Mr Prescott's ministerial responsibilities include the environment and the regions, points three and four will not have been lost on him. So from virtually every standpoint, half a Channel Tunnel Rail Link would almost certainly be worse than none at all. Mr Prescott may reluctantly have to agree.