This is an interlude in a series on passenger rail in the U.S. Part One can be found here and Part Two here.
In the last post, I alluded to rail planners’ current struggle to take into account learnings from international rail systems. So I thought we’d take a break from our regularly scheduled chronological story to take a closer look at this phenomenon and why it’s important.
Let's start by looking at two contrasting cases where foreign technology and knowledge were utilized to lower the cost and speed the adoption of high-speed rail (HSR).
Spain
Spain lagged behind the rest of Europe in its development of HSR. France’s TGV celebrated its inaugural run in 1981. The UK’s InterCity 125 began service in 1976, and Italy’s Direttissima first connected Rome and Florence in 1978.
Spain’s Alta Velocidad Española (AVE) didn’t begin service until 1992.
As the laggard, Spain was able (and made the active choice) to lean heavily on innovations from other successful HSR systems. It used standard gauge track, so its system could interface with the rest of the European train network. It utilized a German signaling system that had been developed the decade before. The original trainsets were based on the third generation French TGV.
Nowhere did Renfe, Spain’s rail operator, push the bounds of innovation—a very reasonable approach for a country’s first effort with HSR. RMTransit described Spain’s approach as not trying “to push the limits…they went for the standard stuff. They said ‘France and Japan, you guys can do the cutting edge innovations, we’re going to build the well-accepted technology.’”
The Spanish approach resulted in a development time of six years for its first line—a marked contrast to California’s HSR, which is now 13 years into development and will be at least a decade more.
Today, Spain has over two thousand miles of high-speed rail, second only in length to:
China
Rail enthusiasts will know of China’s development of high-speed rail as not just the most impressive rail feat of the 21st century, but possibly the world’s most impressive infrastructure project of all time. In a matter of less than 15 years—from 2006–2020, China developed more than 2/3rds of the world’s high-speed track, at nearly 23,000 miles.
I would be remiss not to mention that the project has also likely suffered from more corruption than any other infrastructure project in the world. The system is currently suffering from enormous debt as well.
However, the physical results are hard to argue with.
Like Spain, China’s late development allowed it to borrow heavily from other country’s systems, particularly that of Japan. In fact, the Chinese system was first inspired by a visit Deng Xiaoping took to Japan in 1978. China’s system now dwarfs that of the rest of the world, but its rapid growth was allowed by the use of technology from train manufacturers like Alstom, Siemens, and Kawasaki before going on to manufacture its own indigenous trainsets (still based heavily on foreign technology).
It’s no accident that Spain and China now have the top two high speed rail networks in the world by track mileage. Both took an approach of learning from other systems when initially getting their footing. This allowed them to focus resources on developing scale and high-quality service.
Rail—even high-speed rail—is a bleeding-edge technology. This means that countries wishing to adopt high-speed service need not reinvent the wheel.
Tomorrow—for an important contrast—we’ll look at California’s High-Speed Rail project.
This is a freeform daily newsletter about the transportation industry: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I take shallow dives into topics that I think are interesting, including write ups of startups in the space, historical explorations, market analyses, company and personal profiles, interviews with industry players, and occasional personal essays.
Thanks for reading—and please let me know if you have any feedback or if there is anything you would like to see me cover.
Ride well,
DS