By 2014, high-speed trains will be operating in nearly 24 countries, including China, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United States, up from only 14 countries today, according to new research by the Worldwatch Institute for Vital Signs Online. The report states that the increase in high speed rail (HSR) is due largely to its ability to cover vast geographic distances in a short time and to connect once-isolated regions.
"In just three years, between January 2008 and January 2011, the operational fleet grew from 1,737 high-speed trainsets worldwide to 2,517,” said Worldwatch Senior Researcher Michael Renner, who conducted the research. “Two-thirds of this fleet is found in just five countries: France, China, Japan, Germany, and Spain. By 2014, the global fleet is expected to total more than 3,700 units."
HSR has also been found to be environmentally sustainable, according to a 2006 comparison of greenhouse gas emissions by travel mode, released by the Center for Neighborhood Technologies. This study found that HSR lines in Europe and Japan released 30-70 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-kilometer, versus 150 grams for automobiles and 170 grams for airplanes.
Although there is no universal speed definition for HSR, the threshold is typically set at 155 miles per hour on new tracks and 124 miles per hour on existing, upgraded tracks. The length of HSR tracks worldwide is growing to meet demand. Between 2009 and 2011, the total length of operational track has grown from some 6,650 miles to nearly 10,500 miles. Another 5,000 miles is currently under construction, and some 11,000 miles more is planned, for a combined total of close to 27,000 miles. That is equivalent to about 4 percent of all rail lines--passenger and freight--in the world today.
By track length, the current high-speed leaders are China, Japan, Spain, France, and Germany. Other countries are joining the high-speed league as well. Turkey plans to reach 1,500 miles and surpass the length of Germany's network. Italy, Portugal, and the United States all hope to reach track lengths of more than 600 miles. Another 15 countries have plans for shorter networks.
But in Europe, France continues to account for about half of all European high-speed rail travel. HSR reached 62 percent of the country's passenger rail travel volume in 2008, up from 23 percent in 1990. And in Japan, JR Central, the largest of the Japanese rail operating companies, reports that the average delay per high-speed train throughout a year is just half a minute. On all routes in Japan where both air and high-speed rail connections are available, rail has captured a 75 percent market share.
Further highlights from the research:
• A draft plan for French transportation infrastructure investments for the next two decades allocates 52 percent of a total of $236 billion to HSR.
• In 2005, the Spanish government announced an ambitious plan for some 6,200 miles of high-speed track by 2020, which would allow 90 percent of Spaniards to live within 31 miles of an HSR station.
• Currently, China is investing about $100 billion annually in railway construction. The share of the country's railway infrastructure investment allocated to HSR has risen from less than 10 percent in 2005 to 60 percent in 2010.
• Intercity rail in Japan accounts for 18 percent of total domestic passenger-miles by all travel modes--compared with just 5 to 8 percent in major European countries and less than 1 percent in the United States.
• In France, rail's market share of the Paris-Marseille route rose from 22 percent in 2001 (before the introduction of high-speed service) to 69 percent in 2006. In Spain, the Madrid-Seville rail route's share rose from 33 to 84 percent.
