High Speed Rail Systems

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Authors: Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue

1. Existing High Speed Networks

High speed rail (HSR) refers to passenger rail systems running at operational speed between 200 and 300 km/h, and above in some cases. The HSR era originates from Japan with the Tokaido line, bridging Tokyo and Osaka, which entered into service in 1964 in time for the Tokyo Olympics. Today, HSR is perceived as an efficient alternative to highway and airport congestion. Evidence underline that rail travel time is cut in about a half when a high speed service is established between two city pairs. The setting of high speed rail systems has accelerated around the world over the last two decades, particularly in China where since 2000 several high speed rail corridors have been rapidly set, reaching 9,300 km in 2012. Several countries, including the United States, are also planning for high speed rail corridors, but these projects tend to take decades to implement in part due to funding issues, the limited importance of existing passenger rail services as well as the dominance of air and road. Dedicated high speed postal trains are used in Europe (e.g. France and Sweden) on a daily basis, but the relative decline of postal use leaves such endeavors with questionable growth potential.

High speed rail currently functions under two discrete technologies:

Improvement of conventional rail. The first type uses existing conventional rail systems and its great velocity is primarily the fact of considerable improvements in locomotive performance and train design. They may not be considered as a pure high speed trains per se. England (London - Edinburgh), Sweden (Stockholm - Gothenburg), Italy (Rome - Florence and Rome - Milan), and the United-States (Boston - Washington) are examples of this type of technology. Trains can reach peak speeds of approximately 200 km/h in most cases and up to 250 km/h in Italy. The principal drawback from using this system, however, is that it must share existing lines with regular freight services.
Exclusive high speed networks. In contrast, the second category of high speed trains runs on its own exclusive and independent tracks. In Japan, trains can attain speeds of 240 km/h, but ongoing projects to raise peak speeds at 300 km/h aim at maintaining competitiveness of rail passenger transport versus air. In France, the TGV Sud-Est (Trains a Grande Vitesse) reaches speeds of 270 km/h while the TGV Atlantique can cruise at speeds of 300 km/h. One of the key advantages of such a system is since passenger trains have their exclusive tracks, the efficiency of rail freight transport increases as it inherits the almost exclusive use of the conventional rail system.

The first high speed rail networks were built to service national systems, mostly in a linear fashion along main corridors. For the case of Europe this development has reached a phase where integration between different national high speed systems is taking place. This notably involves Eurostar (Paris - Lille - London) and Thalys (Paris - Brussels - Antwerp - Rotterdam - Amsterdam). The setting of high speed rail networks consequently must take into consideration the following constraints:

Distance between stations. A distance of 50 km is often considered a minimum, leaving enough for trains to accelerate and reach cruising speed. Servicing too many stations undermines the rationale of high speed systems, which is to service large urban agglomerations in a fast and continuous manner.
Separation from other rail systems. This is mainly the case in and out of metropolitan areas where high speed trains are forced to use the standard rail network so that they may connect to central rail stations.
Availability of land, both for terminals and high speed lines. This problem can be mitigated by using existing central rail stations. The development of new HSR stations has often required the use of suburban greenfield sites.

2. Benefits and Challenges

HSR provides a number of economic, social and environmental benefits for the corridors they service. The most salient are:

Capacity and reliability. HSR corridors have the capacity to move a large number of passengers in a safe and reliable manner. They can mitigate congested road and air infrastructure, particularly for short to medium distance trips. They are also much less impacted by adverse weather conditions (e.g. storms) than road and air transport.
Energy and environment. HSR systems consume less energy per passenger-km than road and air transport. They are perceived to provide a more sustainable mobility with electric power and denser land use structures associated with rail-oriented developments.

High speed rail systems can have substantial impacts on other transport modes, even freight transport systems. One of the most apparent is on air transportation services between cities of the high speed rail corridor, particularly the most distant ones. High speed rail is able to compete successfully with short to medium distance air transport services as it conveys the advantage of servicing downtown areas and has much lower terminal time, mainly because of less security constraints. Another emerging trend concerns a complementarity between HSR and air transportation, which involves cooperation between a national air and rail carrier. For instance, Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn as well as Air France and SNCF offer single fares and tickets for selected routes where a high speed rail segment is offered instead of a flight. There is thus a balance between competition and complementarity for HSR and air transportation services, particularly when there is congestion in the air transport system. In this situation the complementarity may help release airport gate slots that can be used to support more revenue generating (longer distance) flights or to reduce congestion.

Rail stations with high speed rail services are also increasingly becoming transport hubs with the associated demands on urban transport systems, particularly public transit. Regarding high speed rail stations, two dynamics have emerged:

The reconversion and usage of central railway stations. Such facilities benefit from high accessibility levels due to their central locations and can thus grant a significant customer base for HSR services.
The setting of new facilities in suburbia. In this case, the HSR station represents an opportunity to create a new node of activity (growth pole) within a metropolitan area.

For freight transportation, there are several potential impacts, mostly indirect. The most straightforward is that since high speed rail uses its own right of way, the separation between passenger and freight systems promotes the efficiency and reliability of both networks. The main reason is that passengers and freight have different operational characteristics, namely in terms of speed and frequency of service. For each passenger car that is removed from regular rail lines an additional three freight rail cars can be accommodated by the new slot. The setting of high speed networks may also incite additional investments in rail freight infrastructure, particularly in metropolitan areas, better signaling technologies and cost sharing initiatives. Although there have been discussions about the potential of using high speed rail to move freight, these have not yet led to concrete realizations. There are plans to have a high speed rail cargo network in Europe by 2015, which would link major air cargo hubs such as Paris, Liege, Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt. The goal is to provide an alternative to short haul air cargo routes as well as the possibility to move cargo between the hubs and improve their long distance air cargo connectivity.

Yet, HSR do not have the far reaching impacts on passenger mobility that its proponents suggest, at least on the medium term. Although HSR in Europe is considered to be successful, its implementation required massive subsidies and its profitability remains difficult to achieve. The case of China is also illustrative in spite of the massive potential that HSR may have in a context of existing high usage levels of passenger rail and a dense urban system, the development of HSR networks is challenging. The rush to construct the system has raised technical and security issues and has been associated with low ridership. China remains a developing country were low fares are the dominant factor in mode selection, implying that HSR is not affordable for the great majority of the population. The location of stations remains a salient issue as suburban locations are advantageous from an availability of land perspective. However, suburban locations tend to be not well connected to the local transport system and are remote from central areas, which is commonly the destination for most passenger traffic. The impacts of new HSR stations as poles for urban growth and development remain so far elusive.

In addition to present technologies, an entirely new technological paradigm has been under development in Japan and Germany since the late 1970s. The new technology is known as Maglev (Magnetic Levitation); it utilizes magnetic forces to uplift trains, guide them laterally and to propel them, relying upon highly efficient electromagnetic systems. The first commercial maglev rail system was inaugurated in Shanghai in 2003. Maglev systems have experienced some constraints on widespread commercialization, however, such as difficulties with integration in established rail corridors and perceptions of high construction costs.