Road-dominated Britain took the first step today in catching up with the rest of Europe by outlining plans for a high-speed rail line from London to Birmingham.

There are now 3,500 miles of high-speed line in mainland Europe compared to only 68 miles in Britain.

About 70% of British people prefer investment in high-speed rail rather than airport expansion, according to a poll by the Guild of Travel Management Companies.

Railfuture's Ian McDonald said: We have been pushing for high-speed rail for a long time."

But Railfuture is keen to see that high-speed lines serve city centres, rather than out-of-town parkway stations, and that they should be able to accommodate European trains which are much larger than British trains.

Ian added: "It is also important that any spending on high-speed rail does not come at the expense of other important projects, such as electrification of existing main lines."

The Government's published plan involves serving Heathrow airport by integrating the new high-speed line into London's Crossrail which is currently under construction.

The European network took a major step forward in December with the completion of the line from Brussels to Aachen and Koln via Liege.

To complement the new high-speed services, a futuristic new station was opened at Liege Guillemins which is now used by trains from Koln to both Amsterdam and Paris.

The £4.5billion project took Belgium 16 years to complete.

Elsewhere progress on high-speed rail is much faster. China already has a series of new lines.

A new high-speed line from Zhengshou to Xi’an opened in February.

Next year the 820-mile line from Beijing to Shanghai will be completed giving a journey time of five hours. That is about twice as fast as the current IC225 trains running between London and Edinburgh.

Brazil is planning to build a line by 2015 from Rio to Sao Paulo and Campinas.

In the land of the car, the American Public Transportation Association has launched a Center for High-Speed Rail, aiming to “advance and promote high-speed rail in the United States”.

BBC report of new route

Guardian report of new route