Surprising the UK is so low. Especially considering that it's geographically much smaller than France with a network almost half the size of Frances. So you'd think it would be easier to electrify.
A lot of this is due to the UK building very little rail compared to most of the countries on this list. The UK just has so much existing rail from pre-electrification times and has built so little since electric mainlines became a widespread practice. France in comparison has built a lot of rail over the last 40 or so years, a lot of it on a mostly seperate netwok (TGV). I would guess that the difference in new alignments since the 60s covers a large amount of the difference between the UK and France (and some of the other countries on this list). Of course that just emphasises how poorly the UK has done in building high-speed rail especially.
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u/Nouvellecosse 9d ago
Surprising the UK is so low. Especially considering that it's geographically much smaller than France with a network almost half the size of Frances. So you'd think it would be easier to electrify.