http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business...et-1686023.html

Business editor Magareta Pagano commented:

Bold, audacious – our modern visionaries can change the world

The plan by the two Cambridge entrepreneurs to raise £4bn to build a new high-speed rail link is breathtaking in its ambition, and bold in its imagination. It's also a fantastic project, one that breaks the orthodoxy that only the state can deliver big infrastructure.

Neither George Freeman – who runs the 4d Biomedical consultancy – nor Nigel Brown – a leading figure in the Cambridge angel scene who has already created one bank and is working on another – lack guts. They've been in venture capital all their adult lives, so they understand risk, and financing. Brown has been frustrated by the region's poor rail network for years, but it was only when Freeman, now the Tory prospective parliamentary candidate for Mid Norfolk, got out on the road to meet his would-be constituents that he appreciated how awful the road and rail network is in East Anglia. Getting from Cambridge to Norwich is a nightmare, while trying to travel to the once prosperous seaside towns of Cromer, Great Yarmouth – which once boasted three railway stations – and Lowestoft is almost impossible. Don't even think about going west to Oxford or south to the big ports at Harwich and Felixstowe. Put that together with government plans to push 85,000 new homes into the region – without improving the transport, and you'll understand why he was so angered.

It will be a big job to bring together the partners necessary to get their scheme off the ground and it will need proper Government backing, and a bit of long-term strategic thinking which the French are so good at. With government bonds where they are, I can't imagine there will be too many problem in raising money from investors.

Freeman and Brown call themselves the new Victorians – I prefer to see them as I hope the future will, as 21st-century Elizabethans. It's about time we had our own visionaries.

Possibly a slightly better idea than the ###### guided bus!!! Noone wants the stupid thing and it's caused the entire place to grind to a hault for the last year.

haha, i saw about that bus on the news. So basically they've put in a tramway?

I'm not entirely sure what it is or how it's going to work, but Hills Road Bridge is only one-way at a time at the moment, which is dreadful especially given that it's between Addenbrookes hospital and everything else, so ambulances are causing absolute havok (and most likely taking a lot longer to get to where they're needed )

The town I work in put in a tramway which was finished about four years ago. The whole town was chaos while they were building it with streets regularly turning into one-way streets (and then a few weeks later one way the other way!).

When it finally opened it had a number of teething problems - the electricity supply short-circuited whenever it rained. Then the insulating on the wiring melted when the temperature went over 30°C and caused a short circuit (actually, they knew this would happen but had banked on temperatures not going over 30°C before the end of the summer term ).

I don't think it's a tramway as such, more something along the lines of a concrete channel with a normal bus in.

My friend's dad called it the 'misguided busway'...

Although I think that is putting it mildy.

I am a great believer in improved railways.

While there are some lines which I think are excellent (Virgin, Southern, Docklands Light Railway, East Midlands Trains lines out of London, even First Great Western have really improved of late), there are some lines which I've found to be really not good at all (National Express East Anglia, who appear to have no clue of how to operate a train service, the blink and you miss them cheap ticket policy of National Express East Coast, to name but two).

There is so much that needs doing to our creaking rail system...