Fast facts: high speed rail – Part One

By Jennifer Perry

There are 2161 high speed trains with maximum speeds of 200 km/h or more currently in operation worldwide and another 1169 high speed trains with maximum speeds of 250 km/h or more.
The International Union of Railway’s (UIC) director of high speed rail Ignacio Barrón de Angoiti presented these, and a number of other interesting facts about high speed rail development around the world at the recent Rail Technology Workshop.
“For a high speed train train running at 300 km/h, each kilometre travelled takes 12 seconds; five kilometres takes one minute; acceleration from zero to 300 km/h requires 10 to 20 kilometres of line, and to stop a train travelling at this speed requires five kilometres of line,” Barrón de Angoiti said.
The most important principle of high speed rail is to view it as a system, he said.
“High speed rail is not just a train going faster than other trains or high performance infrastructure. When we talk about high speed, we are talking about a very complex system formed by the highest performing infrastructure and the most advanced technological level of rolling stock, the most modern design, the highest level of maintenance, the most advanced operation procedures and rules, the best conception of stations (including the best emplacement), techniques of marketing, the most powerful financing engineering, the most complete concept of social and socio-economic involving, etc,” he said.
“All the elements involved are at the very top of the state of the art, like the formula one race, where one gram of fuel becomes important to win the race by one, one-hundredth of a second.”
High speed rail offers an incredibly high capacity of transport; in special conditions it can arrive up to 360,000 passengers per day, as is the case of Tokyo to Osaka line.
Such high capacity means that high speed rail helps to reduce traffic congestion and contain urban sprawl, increases the mobility of people, and promotes economic development and “logical territory structure”. A high speed line or network structures the territory in the same way that an underground network structures any big city.
“One of the most important advantages of high speed is with respect to the environment – in terms of land occupancy, energy efficiency and CO² emissions,” Barrón de Angoiti said.
“The capacity that high speed offers means a high speed line requires a third of land than one motorway for the equivalent capacity.
“From an energy point of view, the energy efficiency becomes higher when speed increases – one kilo of petrol will transport a single passenger 20 kilometres by plane, 54 kilometres by private car and 170 kilometres by high speed train.
“If we consider carbon emissions, a single passenger travelling approximately 600 kilometres by plane will generate about 85 kilograms of CO² but travelling the same distance by high speed will only generate 13 kilograms of CO².”
Another important element is the consideration of external costs such as noise, accident, pollution, climate changes, etc.
In Europe, the magnitude of these costs for  1,000 kilometres travelled is approximately 20 Euros per passenger travelling by train, 48 per passenger travelling by plane and 87 for travelling by private car.
High speed rail is also incredibly safe. There have been no accidents with fatalities registered for trains travelling at more than 250 km/h around the world since the first high speed rail service started in Japan in 1964, Barrón de Angoiti said.

For Part Two of this story, click here.