Britain has allowed itself to be left behind in the race to build high-speed rail lines across Europe and will only catch up if it invests for the long term, the head of French state railways said yesterday.

Guillaume Pepy, the chief executive of SNCF, was speaking toThe Timeson the day the French TGV smashed the world rail-speed record.

The specially adapted double deck train, built by Alstom, reached 357.2mph (574.8km/h) on a slightly downhill stretch of the new TGV line between Strasbourg and Paris. It travelled almost three times as fast as the fastest British domestic train service.

The new line will have a normal operating speed of 199mph (320km/h) and will reduce the journey time between the two cities from 4hr to 2hr 20min. When the second section of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link opens to St Pancras on November 14, the journey time from London to the heart of the Champagne region will fall from five hours to less than three. London to Strasbourg, changing at Lille, will take less than four hours, challenging the airlines’ domination of the route.

Mr Pepy, who is also the chairman of Eurostar, said Britain had chosen to rely on airlines to provide high-speed travel over long distances, while France had been investing in TGV lines for 30 years. “The train was invented in the UK but at a certain point of time you forgot your own railway,” he said.

“It’s a fundamental question of politics: do you invest on a long-term basis? The TGV network could not exist if there was no long-term vision.”

Mr Pepy said the low environmental impact of rail travel meant the case for building high speed lines would grow stronger. A passenger travelling from London to Paris by Eurostar emits a tenth of the carbon dioxide of an airline passenger on the same route.

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