Which, of course, is just part of the Greens’ grand program; the Socialist Weight Loss Plan is next

leaving brighton beach

Dominic Sandbrook, for the Daily Mail: The Golden Age of travel is over

… To put it simply, the Golden Age of travel is over. And for people like me, who grew up with package holidays, came of age with city-break flights and never questioned the cheap petrol, regular trains and busy skies on which our modern economy depends, all of this represents a colossal shock.

Just think of all the things we take for granted. The 07.57 commuter train to London. The long drive to visit relatives on the other side of the country. The weekend meander down country lanes. The Easter holiday on the Cornish coast. The weekend away in Berlin or Barcelona. The fortnight in Spain at the height of summer.

Not everybody can afford all these things, of course. But they've become part of our collective imagination.

What we rarely consider, though, is how unusual this is. Although today's academics are obsessed with immigration, the fact is that most people in recorded history barely moved from their home villages.

Even in the middle of the last century, millions of people lived in the towns in which they had been born, and very rarely visited other parts of the country. [emphasis added]

It's true that the rich have always travelled. In some ways our own summer holidays are simply streamlined versions of the Grand Tour of the 18th century, when aristocratic young men would spend months, even years, on jaunts through France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

…The Grand Tour has long since lost its glamour. Visit Venice today, and you find yourself part of a cast of thousands, jostling for space amid the backpacks and selfie sticks — and that's if you've made it through the queues at airport security and your flight has actually taken off.

The truth, I fear, is that we're living through a second great transformation — the end of an era of cheap mass travel, from local bus journeys and Sunday drives to Mediterranean holidays and city-break flights.

Much of our infrastructure is tired and creaking. The train network was built in the Victorian era; our airports are excruciatingly cramped and overcrowded.

Yet extension and reform seem impossible, partly due to the costs, but also because of the vested interests and absurd regulations blocking any major project.

Two weeks ago, the Government quietly abandoned plans for a £3 billion HS2 branch that would have sped up travel between London and Scotland.

And will plans for a third runway at Heathrow ever get off the ground, or are they doomed to linger for ever in a kind of limbo?

Then, of course, there's the spiralling price of petrol. Many of us assume that this will come down eventually — but what if it doesn't?

What if electric cars really are the future, but we never quite fix that recharging issue?

I don't think it's fanciful, then, to imagine a near future in which travel is a luxury for the rich, rather than a staple of most ordinary people's everyday lives. Foreign holidays may be too expensive and long car journeys a rarity.

While there may be environmental benefits, they will come at a heavy economic and cultural cost. No more school trips abroad; no more foreign exchanges; no more jaunts to museums and art galleries. Horizons will be narrower, and our imaginative lives more pinched.

Perhaps you may think this too bleak. After all, Londoners have just welcomed a gleaming new artery, the Elizabeth Line — one of the most impressive mass-transit lines anywhere in the world.

But in the future, I suspect, our descendants may look back on its vast tunnels and dazzling interiors as a kind of epilogue to the achievements of the Victorian era. A full stop, not the start of a new chapter; a last reminder of the vanished heyday of the Grand Tour and the thrilling possibilities of the open road.

The peasants returned to their villages, the best, exotic locations cleared of sweaty, unwashed hordes, highways cleared of traffic, with the Little People commuting to their service jobs on foot or by bicycle; the Nomenklatura Gods will be in their heaven, and all will be right with world.