High-Speed Rail: The High-Speed Future Of Mass Transportation

In 1964, a very unusual rail service for the time started in Japan: the first Shinkansen. The builders of the line had no idea of  the revolution that they had started, even less of the evolution that high-speed rail (HSR) would go through during the following decades.

Today’s Shinkansen trainsets take over 1,500 passengers (3x a jumbo jet) and travel at speeds up to 200 mph. What’s more, the technology has spread to the rest of Asia and much of Europe, particularly to France.

As in Japan, construction of HSR in France started because of the increased demand for rail transport old rail lines couldn’t afford. The first TGV line was opened in 1981 and the system is a great success with 100 million passengers a year and the network continuously  being extended to cover all France.

This year, the next generation of TGV trains was revealed in a ceremony with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Advanced technologies allow the trains to run at speeds up to 225 mph while taking more passengers and offering a more comfortable ride.

France, however, has not been the only country busy with HSR. In recent years, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Taiwan have all opened up their own systems, in several cases, connected to other countries’ networks, which makes it possible to travel internationally in just a few hours (London, for example, is now connected to Brussels and Paris with only 2 hours of train ride).

One of the few big countries that has been lagging behind in these matters is the USA. In the 1950s the government almost abandoned passenger railways and invested in a network of Interstate highways, highways which may lose much of their importance if oil prices continue to rise.

There is one notable exception, though. Current plans indicate that California should have a HSR system by 2020, but as there is still more than 10 years to it, nothing is sure yet.

The reason why HSR is so expensive is that it requires special tracks to be built, ultra-level and with almost no curves. The image on the left shows what a High-Speed Railway looks like.

About 2000 miles of HSR is under construction in Europe with another 5000 planned to be built up to 2025.

In Asia, Japan’s Shinkansen continues to expand, as do the HSR networks of  Taiwan and South Korea, even if the expansion there is not as impressive as in Europe.

Recent studies show that passengers think of HSR as a very attractive and comfortable way to travel, and 95% of them choose it for journeys up to 2 hours(where it actually is faster than by plane, if you count check -in times in) and 50% for journeys up to 5 hours, providing it is available and is cheaper than by air.

I’ll finish the story off with a video of the current speed record for railed vehicles conventional trains (no-one can beat rocket sleds), just set by a TGV train in 2007. From 1:10 to 1:30 the train sounds and looks like a rocket…

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