Pipe Dream?

I almost chocked when I saw this on my BBC news feed on my homepage:

Network Rail is considering five new intercity routes across the UK because passenger numbers have increased by 40% in a decade. The Paddington-to-Penzance line is one of those to be included in a study by the company Link

Surely no one seriously expects this government to come up with anything this radical? Actually not just this government, but I dont expect the next one to either.

Then I explored a bit further:

The routes to be examined are likely to follow roughly a series of existing routes from London: the West Coast Line to Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow, Great Western line to Bristol, East Coast line to Edinburgh, Midland line to Sheffield and Chiltern route to Birmingham FT

Now that is probably more likely - London to Bristol being made high speed , which would improve journey times a bit for the Westcountry, but not by that much.

The lines would run alongside the existing rail network, in a similar way to the French TGV network.

Sounds great but dont hold your breath:

Any proposals considered in the review would not come into effect until after 2014.

I am sure more will come out over the next day or two on this story. At the moment it all sounds a bit too good to be true.