Build the Line. Even if the Train’s Not Ready Yet.

The high cost of short-term thinking in Product, infrastructure, and investment.

In the 1960s, British Railways underwent one of the most consequential efficiency drives in its history. The Beeching Report, commissioned to save operating costs, led to the closure of over 2,300 stations and around 5,000 miles of railway line - half the UK’s network.

The rationale was simple: cut routes that weren’t profitable. The result, however, was devastating. Entire regions were disconnected. Local economies shrank. Car dependency exploded. And decades later, we’re spending billions trying to reverse decisions made in haste.

It’s a vivid, tragic example of what happens when short-term cost-cutting trumps long-term value creation.

And while it’s easy to chalk this up as a historical policy error, the same logic - and the same consequences - persist in how we run companies, invest capital, build products, and plan for growth.

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Shrinking the Map Shrinks the Imagination

The Beeching cuts didn’t just remove rail lines. They removed optionality. They shrank the future.

By focusing purely on near-term operating costs, the UK lost generational assets: transport corridors, regional resilience, and equitable access to opportunity. And the economic and environmental cost of that short-term decision still compounds today.

Fast forward to the present, and we find ourselves repeating the same mistake - this time with HS2.

The HS2 Saga: When Vision Fails to Scale

HS2, once billed as the UK’s great leap forward in high-speed rail, has been reduced to a truncated symbol of political inertia. Originally designed to rebalance the economy and boost connectivity between North and South, the project has been scaled back repeatedly. Entire sections, like the planned eastern leg to Leeds or the connection to Manchester, have been shelved. And with them, so too has the promise of long-term regional regeneration.

Instead, vast sums have been spent on partial solutions. London, of course, remains better connected than ever.

It’s Beeching in reverse: this time, we’re building - but only halfway. Again, the cost of not seeing the full future is likely to outweigh the cost of doing it properly in the first place.

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A Tale of Two Tracks: China and the US

For a global audience, let’s look further afield.

• China has built the world’s largest high-speed rail network in under 20 years. The country sees rail not only as infrastructure, but as national strategy - connecting people, industries, and regions as part of a coherent long-term plan.

• The United States, meanwhile, has famously struggled to build any meaningful high-speed rail, with projects like California’s bullet train mired in political deadlock, cost overruns, and scope creep.

The difference? Long-termism. Vision. And the willingness to build the line, even if the train - or the returns - aren’t ready yet.

This same logic applies to companies. Markets reward consistency, but the greatest returns come from bold, compounding bets made well before the payoff is obvious.

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Why Short-Term Thinking Persists

Short-termism is rarely idiotic - it’s systemic.

• In politics, election cycles drive visibility and favour fast wins over foundational reform.

• In corporates, quarterly earnings targets prioritise predictable outputs over bold innovation.

• In investment management, fund cycles and hold periods can make value extraction more appealing than value expansion.

• In Product teams, agile delivery can descend into feature-churning with no cohesive long-term vision.

It’s not that we don’t know how to think long-term. It’s that our funding models, incentives, and governance structures often punish us for doing so.

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The Unequal Cost of Short-Termism

Short-term thinking doesn’t just miss future opportunity - it entrenches inequity.