Why are there no dedicated high-speed lines in Europe and the US?
source: JR Central, via Foreign Press Center Japan
There are many 100 per cent dedicated high-speed lines in Asia, but not in Europe and the US, says Torkel Patterson, vice chairman of the International High Speed Rail Association. “It’s really about having the courage to build it”. It is difficult to build completely new lines, so the future will be to bury linear infrastructure.
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(2) The French TGV/LGV are also based on dedicated high sped only lines and for example do not allow locomotives with normal axle weights of 22 tons. True, some TGV and Spanish high speed trains continue on slower lines to smaller towns (more so before the gradual extension of the network), and entry into the cities is mainly on older lines, unless completely new stations were built outside.
The German system with rather short high speed sections in the integrated rail grid is different.
(1) I believe the Spanish high speed rail system is pretty “dedicated”, given that it has standard gauge different to the pre-existing (large gauge) routes shared by slower passenger trains and some freight trains. In Japan, the Shinkansen also use stard gauge, contrary to the small gauge of other lines, and some slower pre-existing lines have been modified to accomodate Shinkansen trains.
I think the question that has been raised is too technical. Transportation is a service, and for every product or service, the costs & user benefits are essential. Transportation users don’t care about the undelying technology or engineering principles. So a “dedicated high speed line” is a railway technical subsystem perspective. But what really matters is a balanced customer attractiveness in terms of performance, costs and operating profitability.
This almost seems like a lobbying piece for CJRC and misses the point around HSR networks completely. There are a few points that need to be considered here:
1) The author and the IHRA Vice Chairman’s claims that only Asian HSR networks are 100% dedicated is not correct. As Joachim mentioned, the French LGV lines as well as most parts of the Spanish + Italian HSR lines are nearly 100% dedicated but were built within pre-existing networks. Japan’s railway network was nearly inexistent…
.. continued 1) prior to the 1960’s, when Japan decided to adopt a European-based technology model and prioritised high-speed lines to re-build their networks. The other Asian network that would be comparable (China) has been completely built over the past 20 years. So we are comparing apples to pears in this situation.
2) HSR takes a significant amount of manpower and investment to build, with returns on investment typically taking anywhere between 10-20 years, depending on the network layout.
… continued 2) and this is after a 10-20 year construction period, depending on the size and complexity of the network in hand.
HSR can and should be built but it is not the silver bullet solution to all inter-city problems. It needs to be well integrated into a larger railway/mobility network for its benefits to be fully reaped & felt. Otherwise expensive white elephant projects deviate resources from other potentially beneficial solutions.
The French LGVs are exclusively for high-speed. All trains run at the same speed.
The same goes for the German Frankfurt-Cologne line and several others.
To the best of my knowledge, no other traffic ever comes onto these rails. And isn’t that the definition of “dedicated”?
PS: Lumping the US and Europe into the same group is just plain silly. The US has never run any trains at 300km/hr; Europe runs massive numbers of trains, every day, cruising at this speed.