i dont even know why you are though, i guess the service quality is better but all connections to the HSR suck, italian slow rail is the worst i have ever experienced in europe.
At this rate, any standard of decent high speed rail from abroad is better than American standards. The NEC needs better service. It’s the best in the country and it’s not even real HSR. I use the Acela and regional to travel between NY and Boston all the time and it’s a nice service, but it could be better
In Spain we have security to boarding high-speed trains due to the terrorist atacks of 2004, the fear of having an explosion at 290 Km/h was very significant and they decided to have security, however, is much faster that airports, no more than 2 minutes.
This is partly why it was also introduced extensively in China (2014 Kunming Station Terrorist Attack, among others). Entering the railway system in China was a lot easier prior to that attack
That sorta fear is just pointless. It's an inconvenience for everybody and won't stop anybody determined since it's far too casual to actually be secure. It's the sorta "we must show we're doing something!" policy. Doesn't make sense. Do it anyway.
@@Sp4mMe I don't think that's true. there's a clear barrier of difficulty caused for someone trying to bring a backpack filled with 12 kg of nitroglycol. backpacks have to be put through the scanner, without them nobody would detect those bombs. it's not just fear-mongering, it's an actual effort to stop future catastrophic events.
@@danny8371 So instead put them on train tracks. Or right outside the security barriers at busy times. Or use non-detectable or harder to detect methods (that youtube probably won't appreciate talking about), or just plain force. And most obviously just don't do it on a highspeed train; do it elsewhere then. How about a school? Maybe a bus? A busy market? It's nonsense. This achieves nothing; there's no point in special protection for this one specific case of terrorist attack that hasn't even happened yet (was local trains after all) and that has no specific reason to occur over any alternative ...
@@yemmohater2796 To be fair, the only line which is HSR on the Americas is the NEC and even that is only made out of upgraded tracks (lower requirements for HSR by UIC standards) and on top has a major bottleneck at Connecticut.
@@yemmohater2796hardly surprising given the dysfunctional gov for the past years .. and also lack of priority for important civilian infrastructure, especially for rail
As a Spanish I can say that airport security is not really "airport security". In just 5 minutes you've gone past it, is like the security at the entrance of official government places, just a bag scanner and a police officer there watching.
yes, why do all youtubers make such a big fuss about it? You don't have to take your belt or shoes off, nor remove liquids or electronics from the suitcase... Just run your suitcase through a scanner and it never takes more than 5 minutes (in my town it normally takes 2 minutes). A totally different experience from the airport security.
As a Brit currently in China, I've been so impressed by the trains here. What's just as impressive is the supporting infrastructure they've built to make the network so well connected. They've built endless bridges and tunnels in the most difficult places. Yes, there is a security check, but it's pretty quick. Just like in Spain.
Indeed, currently working in China and just got back from a 21 days business trip 3 days ago, the distance between stations to the city centre is quite different, it all depends on the planning of the local government and the economy of the local area. For bigger cities, the stations are located closer to the city centre and for smaller cities the stations are much farther away. The stations located in Beijing, Shanghai, Jinhua, etc are situated in the city centre or are very close to it. Major cities would also have multiple stations, with various distances from the city centre. Most noticeably when I first went to Jinan, I bought a ticket to the Jinan East Station, It was a two-hour drive to the city centre, and the second time I went there I bought the ticket to the Jinan Station, I walked to my hotel (took me 10 min).
@@uzin0s256 It's never banned, you just can't access it without VPN because Google doesn't want to keep Chinese user data on Chinese soil and Chinese government also has a strict policy over nude/violent content which Google doesn't want to comply.
I would consider HS1 in England to be the northern end of the LGV Nord line in France. It is built to French rather than British specifications though they are quite similar, and its main purpose is to allow Eurostar trains to reach London, and Eurostar is basically the international division of SNCF. South Eastern Railways high speed services from London to Kent only exist because the line was built anyway from the Eurostar budget, it has spare capacity, and they may as well use it for something; otherwise it wouldn't have been the top priority for investing in high speed rail services.
Some French specs in terms of sections of signalling and catenary etc. yes, but would have been insane not to build it to those specs considering it was funded by the British government to connect to Paris first and foremost, though a 300 km/h line to Kent would definitely not have been on the list of successive Tory governments otherwise ha (sold their share of Eurostar for spare money lol) - the Eurostar monopoly needs to die asap with more competition - way underused and overpriced
Having the UK on this list is absurd to me. Sure, travelling on HS1 is great, but it's hardly relevant to 99% of people in the country. While I appreciate the measure is quality rather than quantity, it strikes me that location is part of that equation. As for the 200 km/h lines their quality is pretty poor with a number of operators running some of the most unreliable services in the country, while the fares are at or above those for true high speed on the continent.
@@jockcox When the union disputes are finally settled, maybe we will see a return to reliable train travel. But also the ranking may be based on future developments, in which case HS2 will definitely put the UK in atleast 9th place.
You say that but there is quite a lot more British specifications than French specifications. The was not built with the Eurostar budget, since Eurostar service could happily run on the third rail network into Waterloo. Also HS1 was built for freight traffic which is something which French high speed lines are not built for and also all equipment is to British standards, for example the Interlocking on HS1 is completely different to LGV Nord and the Channel Tunnel. Even the OLE is built to British versions of the French OLE to make sure it would work in britain. Also there was always plans for higher speed Kent services. The colour light signalling is to British Standards on HS1 and not French standards.
The most frustrating thing about HS2 is that the people most vociferously opposed to it were the ones directly responsible for driving up the costs so much, which they then use as evidence why it should be scrapped. Environmentalists and NIMBYs formed an unholy alliance to challenge it at every turn, massively increasing the legal and land acquisition costs of the project, and forcing more of it to be laid in expensive tunnels as a response to their (mostly) bogus concerns. Still others whine "the money could be spent on improving local and regional services", completely failing to understand that HS2 is designed to relieve congestion on the West Coast Main Line, allowing more capacity for local services. Damn nimbys, I hate them so much.
Absolutely, the West Coast Mainline is full and no amount of "digital railways" will fix it. The other thing they also miss out is removing the "fast trains" from the West Coast will vastly increase the number of local and intermediate journey trains the line can carry. The biggest miss here is not taking HS2 under Manchester Piccadilly allowing east-west travel to other destinations and NPR. There's only one west/north facing terminating platform in Manchester city centre (which can only take a 4 carriage train). Meaning almost all journeys to the north or west need to be through trains adding to the unreliability of services.
The reason Spanish stations have airport-style security is because of the Madrid terrorist bombings of commuter trains back in 2004. Japanese stations don't do this because they obviously don't have this problem. That aside, we are proud of the high-speed system of our southern Korean brothers. We hope that when we reunify, the system will be able to expand to the rest of the peninsula. And a huge kudos to China's HSR network. Being able to expand so fast, on top of accounting for two-thirds of ALL of the world's HSR, is an incredible feat. They've shown that being a big country with different environments doesn't matter and built a huge network anyway. They believed and never gave up. This should be a wakeup call for the US to follow. Also, you missed the Seoul to Gangneung portion of the KTX map at 6:11 that was opened for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang! That helped so many people get to the Games!
saying this about japan is funny since tokyo removed all its trash bins out of fear of terrorism. I just dont see the point in acting like that, since you're just gonna change how terrorism works, not if it happens. They will just attack tracks instead if they wanted to.
As a Spaniard I must say our airport style security check at stations isn't that much of a problem, it usually takes less than 15 minutes in the worst of cases which is a bit disturbing but won't make much of a difference
similar case in China, at least for now security checks for trains is alot quicker than that of planes. there are annoying exceptions though, but most of the times arriving 30min before departure is enough.
While visiting relatives in 2018, we took the high-speed rail from Beijing to Shanghai. The experience was incredible. The distance was the same from Detroit to Jacksonville, Florida, and it took four hours! My wife left a cup of water on the windowsill, and there was not even a ripple from any sort of train shaking. To me, it is the standard for high-speed rail!
It’s amazing that there can even be a top 10 HSR video. 20 years ago it would have been a much different discussion. Were there even 10 HSR countries back then? I wonder what the world will look like 20 years from now.
Rest assured, it will still be China in 20 years, China will build high-speed rail to 70,000 km by 2035, now it is 4.5w km. By 2025, China will run 450-600 km/h high-speed rail, and China's high-speed rail ticket price is the cheapest and most stable in the world.
@@kwlkid85 It also is HSR by the UIC standards as upgraded tracks (which most of them are) have a lower requirement to be considered high-speed instead of new tracks (same reason why the US has HSR despite no track surpassing the speed limit of 250+ km/h).
As a Moroccan, I am grateful for including my country in your top 10 list. While I acknowledge the potential benefits of directing the funds towards updating the existing rail infrastructure, I must emphasize that our current system has been incredibly successful among both domestic riders and international visitors. In fact, it has prompted the government to expand the system further, reaching other major cities and tourist destinations, including the southern regions of the country. These expansion efforts will be implemented alongside the existing conventional rail infrastructure in Morocco.
Spain has a massive and super-efficient high-speed network, you can travel from one point of the country to another in less than 3h, it has the world's second-biggest network just behind China and it is currently upgrading all the trains and stations making it looking top-notch. The reason why you have to go to security as the airport (even tho it's not quite like it) it's due to the 2004's terror attacks in Atocha -Spain's main high-speed hub in Madrid-, it's currently the worst terror attacks in the history of whole Europe, around 200 died.
The thing about Germany is that citys are many but not that big. I believe that it makes it difficult to build high speed rail lines, since there are so many places to either through or around
A lot has to do with line congestion and nowhere to put new right of way, Germany has probably the most extensive conventional rail network in the world so most of their HSR buildout is doing incremental improvements to LZB corridors to allow increased speeds usually of 250km/h.
the largest city in germany houses around 5% of the population, for japan its 33%, for Korea its 50%, for France its 20%. Germany would have to build a system like China, which has plunged the raulways into massive debts
Bit of a controversial opinion perhaps, but I'm a big fan of prioritizing fast conventional rail over true high speed rail. Conventional rail does a great job of serving much larger numbers of people, making trains much more accessible for large parts of the country. In fact, I'd argue that conventional rail is an absolute prerequisite for good high speed rail service, since it makes it easier to access those high speed trains all the while serving huge numbers of different trips. HSR also has a very dangerous "flashiness factor" that makes it a very appealing prestige project for politicians. Not a single politician is gonna put "several incremental improvements that ensure better and more consistent train service to a larger number of people" on their resume, which is kinda the point. HSR has the risk of draining the rest of the train network of resources.
You can do both (if you can afford it naturally). In italy for example we also have intercity services serving the same routes as high speed trains but running on conventional tracks at speed up to 200 kph, and stopping at medium/big cities not served by high speed
That is exactly the problem systems like the one in spain and france have. They have a great high speed system but the rest of the public transportation outside the big cities is really lacking and constantly underfunded. Thats great for tourists and business travelers but wont help a single bit towards getting more people to switch their primary mode of travel away from the car
@@antoniovitellaro China also has a large conventional rail system with some trains running up to 160km/h, as well as D trains that run up to 250km/h that can run on a mix of dedicated high speed lines and conventional lines.
@@Urbanhandyman I did that on purpose, since speed really isn't the only factor in what makes trains fast. A frequent train that serves a lot of stops can be a fast way of travelling, even if it doesn't reach crazy speeds. Here in the Netherlands, most trains don't exceed 140 ish km/h, but we have a good backbone intercity network, and local trains that make every stop, meaning it's often comparable to cars, or fast enough. A HSR line without a good supporting network is basically handicapped from the start. It's s car- and plane-brained transit solution.
Sad that u missed some Korean HSR corridors in the map, such as Gyeonggang-line from Gangneung to Seoul, but still a very good summary of pros and cons of the whole system! Korea have long been a very capitol-centric country, especially after the economic crisis in late 1990s. Governmental organisations and major businesses started to invest almost exclusively in Seoul and surrounding cities. Since then, population is rapidly growing in nearly all cities in Seoul Area, while all the other regions are facing severe decrease in number of residents, due to lacking infrastructure and job opportunities. Recently (already quite late tho) the government noticed the importance of 'balanced' national development, trying to invest in regions outside of the Greater Seoul. Such investments involve several railway projects - including high-speed rebuilding of Gyeongjeon-line, an east-west railway corridor in Southern part of the country. These investments are still far from enough considering how much money is being poured into the Seoul region at the same time, but can be a good starting point. + about the KTX to Incheon airport: the KTX heading to the airport used to take a huge detour, stopping at at least one major station in the Seoul city centre. (despite being called as 'Seoul'-Incheon int'l airport, the airport itself is located in a seperate municipality) For a better airport connection, local governments are planning to create a second air-rail link, cleverly named 'second airport express railway', from the airport to Incheon station. From there, the line is also planned to be connected with existing HSR network through Suin-Bundang line.
I thought the 2nd airport rail link will be the GTX Line D from Incheon Airport to Gangnam district because there is currently no direct airport connection to Gangnam. I read before that GTX-D will be a Y-shaped line with one branch going to Incheon airport. Is this still going to push through?
@@lawrencebautista1 GTX-D's extension to ICN airport is being considered as a seperate project than second airport rail express, with a totally new undersea tunnel! I personally think extension of GTX is a bit of overkill and the budget should be spent on the rest of the country, since line 9 and current AREX is still working on their through-running project, which allows the direct connection bw airport and Gangnam. tho no one knows when, and considering the potential demand, GTX-D can be feasible for Gangnam aswell.
@@Lowspecgames-lr2qz oh I see. So Line 9 is planned to have 'through service' with AREX line hence this necessitates extending Line 9 westward to link with AREX. I'm a bit skeptical about this because Line 9 is already notorious as the most congested subway line in Seoul since it only operates maximum 6 cars. And it took a while before it was expanded from 4 to 6 cars. Although the side tracks and platforms of Line 9 for express services can also be used by a Line 9 airport express.
Good reasoning for a lot of these! Suggstions inspired by watching. 1. After the remark about the lack of high speed integration in Germany: Would love a video on DB in general. I have seen few videos on its network compared to Switzerland, Italy, or France. 2. Mentioning poor connection to Germany: Video discussing the integration high speed rail services in Europe (and to coutnries next to Euroep), in terms of timetable, train standards, and fares. 3. Also would love video on potential of high-speed sleeper trains! This absolutely needs to be considered in US (but in Europe too) for trips like NY-Florida, NY-Chicago, NY-Toronto, NY, San Francisco-LA, etc.
High speed trains are extremely noisy machines. Having them functioning in the middle of the night would create massive problems for surrounding communities.
Sleeper trains don't need to be high-speed. In 8-10 hours you can get across all of Europe with 200km/h even with stops. You just need sleeper trains that do those 200km/h on the HSR network
@@Desi365 This isn't totally untrue. I am curious, though, do you have this opinion because you live next to a rail line? The other thing is, you could apply the same logic for highways (the current US alternative to night trains), which are arguably louder to nearby residences, and where cars and trucks can come by constantly all night. The thing about high speed night trains is that 1) at most they would only come through an area couple times per night, the noise only lasting ten or so seconds. Also, if trains were passing through residential areas, they would likely have to slow down anyway, mitigating a lot of the potential noise. I find it unlikely that new grade seperated high speed rail capable routes will be driven through dense neighborhoods where there would be big disruption. Just my opinion, not saying your wrong, no hard feelings.
@@J-Bahn no, i don't live next to a train line. But the SNCF had a study years ago showing that having high speed trains circulating during the night was unfeasable, in reality. The idea was to transport mail, i think.
Spain has security controls in high speed train stations because they already had terrorism in a station in madrid, Atocha. This security check is only made for high speed travels and it only takes 1 minute, it's just passing your suitcase through a detector and picking it up. Anyways, i think that isn't a bad aspect, instead it is a good one because it makes a lot more safe the travel and it makes sure there can't be blades, knifes or even guns in trains. In my opinion, that should be a basic feature in every country with high speed trains.
One of the perks of Italian high speed rail network is that even if it's small, due to the peculiar shape of our country it still manages to connect most important cities. And this is incredibly great on its own because in many other countries they need several lines to do so. Not to mention that our cities attracts lots of tourists and HSR basically put these cities on a single line. Sure, the South is not connected yet, but it will, the project is ongoing. Currently there is another line in construction connecting Napoli to Bari.
@@askallois Alitalia was bankrupt for the whole 30 years previous. The State tried magic tricks and to summon demons in order to save that company. But never worked. In the end the best thing we can do is leave it fail and make a new one.
Suprise not to mention Italy as the first country to open the high speed rail market for competition. While China has high speed sleeper, it's service is limited to only a few lines and no more new trains are built, which I think should deserve more focus as this is perhaps the only way to compete with planes in such large distance in China such as Guangzhou - Beijing
The point was regarding not assuming that China is fist because it has the most kilometers of HSR. He was emphasizing quality over quantity. Apparently, in his educated opinion, China has BOTH!
@@barryrobbins7694 China’s HSR is actually one of the best in terms of quality, it is clean, secure, has zero accidents, it always leaves on time to the seconds…if you erect a coin near the window, it won’t fall down but it failed the test with Japanese HSR. And lastly it is affordable, for example, the distance from Beijing to Shanghai of 1318 km only costs 69 Euro and travel time is 4.5 hours. The HSR train station in China is huge and has up to 40 platforms, bigger than the airports in many countries.
About Southern Italy: The HS network (250>km h) ends in Salerno, south of Naples. However, from Salerno to Reggio Calabria (the southernmost point of peninsular Italy) there is already a very modern and fast railway of 200kmh. Within the year they will start building two new tracks, for 1/3 of the entire section, at HS 300kmh. Thus the Salerno - Reggio section will be a railway with speeds of 300kmh for 1/3 and 200kmh for the remaining 2/3. To the east of Naples, in the direction of Puglia, the Naples - Bari AV/AC is already under construction and the works should end in 2027. This line will have a maximum speed of 250kmh and the longest railway tunnel in Italy will be present on the section (27km) on a par with the "Genova Milano HS" tunnel, also 27km long In Sicily, on the other hand, they are building a new and modern regional line (Palermo-Catania-Messina) with speeds of 160-200kmh and it is hoped that it will be connected to the national high-speed network via the "strait bridge" more than 3km long
So basically Sicily's 5 million inhabitants are not getting any true HS. Idk why but we tend to forget that the busiest domestic air routes are the ones from Rome to Palermo (5th largest city in the country) and Catania (10th largest), and simply the absence of true HS on these corridors makes them a valid connection only to Reggio Calabria, 150k inhabitants. Let's add that the line also passes through Naples and connects Sicily to the most industrialized metropolis and educational centre (of the South, ofc). The Naples-Bari is basically a faster conventional line that ends in Foggia, half way to Bari. From then on, you travel on the line covering the most populated area in northern Apulia. That's why it will take 2 hours for 260 km. Sicily is basically getting its convential railways upgraded to standards that are normality in the mainland under the name of high speed. Great marketing operation, not the best for the island. And that just concerns the South, we're not even talking of the Adriatic, of the North-East, of Liguria or of Sardinia that has it worst of all of us. Yay
@@Hastdupech8509 In sicilia per ora non ha senso una AV perchè mancano ancora le linee convenzionali. La AV si fa dove ci sono già due binari che hanno quasi raggiunto la saturazione e per questo motivo se ne costruiscono altri 2 in aggiunta a quelli esistenti per separare il traffico regionale da quello lunga percorrenza, poi viene da se che se devi costruire due nuovi binari in aggiunta a quelli esistenti, quelli nuovi li fai predisposti per l'AV. Considera poi che l'alta velocità funziona fino a determinate distanze, superate queste, l'aereo è il mezzo più logico. Esempio: AV Milano - Roma 570km 3h Catania - Roma 800km 5h/5h 30 (con Salerno - Reggio AV + Ponte + nuova Messina/Catania in costruzione) Come vedi la distanza Catania/Palermo - Roma è troppa per far si che il treno vinca di netto sull'aereo ma è comunque sufficiente per creare un traffico ferroviario importante. Però, anche con tutte le opere necessarie, un viaggio in treno dalla durata di 5/5h30 non può scalzare il viaggio in aereo. Considera poi, tornando alla questione "perchè non fanno una vera AV in sicilia?", che a fare la differenza sui tempi di percorrenza sulla tratta sicilia - roma che oggi si fa in 10h (Intercity Catania-Roma) é: 1) ponte sullo stretto: risparmio di 1h e 30/2h 2) Lotti essenziali Salerno - Reggio C: risparmio di circa 1h 3) Meno fermate (Ipotizzando un servizio frecciarossa con poche fermate): risparmio ipotetico di circa 30/40 minuti 4) Nuova Catania - Messina: risparmio di 30minuti Una AV 300kmh Catania - Messina (95km), al massimo farebbe risparmiare altri 10 minuti ma ad un costo spropositato. 90 km di nuova AV in un contesto orografico complicato come quello tra messina e catania verrebbe a costare circa non meno di 8 miliardi! Ha senso spendere questa cifra per risparmiare 10 minuti di tempo?
Le uniche due cose utili per velocizzare i collegamenti in Sicilia, oltre a quello che si sta già facendo o che è in programma di realizzazione, sono il completo raddoppio tra Catania e Palermo e il raddoppio completo e velocizzazione tra Palermo e Messina. Non serve nessuna vera linea AV, bastano le velocizzazioni fino a 200 km/h...
@@d1234as esattamente, chissà quanto tempo deve passare ancora per il raddoppio completo della Palermo - Messina. Credo che rimarrà con quel buco di 80km a binario singolo per ancora tanto tanto tempo
Big cities in China tend to have more than one train station one of which is usually centrally located. So, if one was planning to travel in China and preffered to arrive at a central location then they should look for a suitable option. It could cost more than a trip from /to one of the staions from the periphery and availability is usualy limited.
A big reason why Germany doesn’t rank higher on this list is the German car industry lobby. Germany invests too much in highways compared to the rail network.
Not sure if ranking HSR Systems like this makes sense. Yes, China's HSR is impressively fast if you need to go from one end-point to the other. On the other side, the German ICE system for example is simply not designed to do that - it was never the desired to go non-stop from Hamburg to Munich and skipping all the big cities in between. If you want to fo from a medium-sized to another medium-sized town, for example, your connection is likely much better in Germany than in France or China. There are simply very different conditions and very different goals here, so that the two systems can simply not really be compared.
Fully agree with your comment. Also, in cases like Italy and France you see what happens, if you only focus on high speed but need ages to get to your final destination because local trains are underdevelopped or non-existent.
What even made you think Chinese HSR goes from end-point to end-point non-stop? It is freaking ridiculous considering your whole point is based on such absurd assumptions purely out of wishful ignorance. It is like you made whole point because you don’t like China being ranked No.1 on his list therefore literally made things up and stretched an argument because you don’t actually know anything about the subject matter.
@@nehcooahnait7827but I'm pretty sure that the Chinese HSR doesn't stop in what feels like hundreds of cities that have less than 1 million inhabitants. And that IS the case in Germany. Still however there are the ICE Sprinter trains and many more planned that will connect all the major cities even faster than they already do currently by skipping many smaller stops.
@@RMTransit Indeed, thanks for the great video and making the effort of ranking. whats more we learn a lot about the different HSR-strategies in the ranked countries. I would rank this as being the most interesting point.
What you didn't mention about France is that those TGV lines are very busy. Like a fully packed double decker TGV train leaves Gare de Lyon every 5 minutes or so. All the services to Switzerland and Italy leave that station, as well as the most of the lines going south. There's also few long distance slow trains in France, because for the vast majority of trips the TGV is so fast it makes sense to go all the way to Paris up one arm of the TGV network and then down another. Because of the frequency of the TGV trains, they have a very high minimum speed for all trains on those lines. They want to keep the slower tracks for local services and freight. They also do a great amount of integration with buses, so if there's a small destination near a train station, there's probably a dirt cheap bus that can get you there. Forgot to add that there is long-distance, cheap, slow service in France. It's called a bus lol
Yeah, I agree. I’m not too sure why Italy above France is on his list. I would swap them around, based on what you’ve mentioned about the service frequencies and the HS trains overall in France, especially with the different types of TGVs with the single only deck and double deck trains
It is a bit upsetting to constantly hear you have to go through "airport style security" to ride a high-speed Spanish train. It is basically a scanner for your baggage, you have to get rid of your coat, period. You do not have to go yourself through a scanner, get rid of your belt, or any of that. It takes 2 minutes, as anyone who has tried it can attest. Hardly the inconvenience people seem to think it is.
I see airport style as anything which requires me or my stuff to go through a machine. It's just not part of riding trains in a large part of the world and I think it's fair to bring it up! Lots of airport security is effectively just a baggage scan too. I have *definitely* been held up by it for more than 2 minutes as well, and I think it's fair for me to voice that as an inconvenience.
Nobody is censoring that you mention it as an inconvenience if you feel it like that. It does exist, so it is fair to bring it up, you have all the right to do so, hey, it is your channel. But an accurate depiction of what is like should be given. Airport security is most definitely NOT just a baggage scan, it implies more than that, you are personally searched and all your belongings need to go through the scanner. Plus you need to arrive way before boarding. This is not what you have to do before boarding these trains, that is my point.
I think mostly peoples only regular experience needing to go through an organized security process is at an airport, thus why I bring it up. I think the main difference is between being able to walk right in and to your trains and having to go through any kind of screening process.
Like Germany's system the most, not the fastest in absolute terms, but the best trains imo and does manage to connect a lot of cities, which are much closer together/denser than other countries so does what its designed to do.
@@thomastschetchkovic5726 it is? wow i always thought it was pretty expensive if you can't get early booking discounts etc. which then it is really good. like 50€ -70€ from Hannover to Munich is really affordable. but the regular price is more like 130-150€
The thing about DB prices is: if you book in advance, prices will be pretty low already and if you travel just 2 or 3 times a month you can get discounts with the BahnCard. And if you travel super frequently you can get a monthly subscription that works for every train in all of Germany and I think even first class. But that's super expensive obviously and only reasonable for really frequent users of the network
Regarding the use of powercars instead of distributed motors in France: Locomotive hauled trains (which powercars are this for this purpose) excell the best with limited decelerations like few stops (this is something you mentioned in your American HSR explainer, for that matter) but there is another advantage for using them instead of multiple units: They aren't restricted by the train's floor height. Low-floor trains (which most bi-level trains are), though great for level boarding with low platforms, don't leave much space for engine stuff and more powerful engines require more space. Only few EMUs like the Stadler SMILE manage to drive at high-speed operation while the rest are high-floor. Notice that although there is a single level AGV (EMU version of the TGV, most notably used by Italo), there are no bi-level AGV for this reason, you can only order one with power cars only. And with SNCF's decision to use bi-level trains for the HSR network, the TGV is bound to powercar trains.
Using power cars was also the only way to reduce weight enough to meet the strict axle loading regulations of France's high speed track while using double decker trains. In addition with a non emu you can make the platform shorter to not have to account for the length of the power cars. Ultimately the TGVs have the highest capacity of any high speed train, while still being on Jacobs bogies and thus very comfortable and safe.
@@user-kw9qu2gz8v I wouldn't say it's the "only" way. JR East operated E1 & E4 MAX dual-decker EMUs for several decades (the 100 and 200 series also had a couple of double decker EMUs in their sets, but those were for green cars). Nor is the 17t axel loading limit an issue. The original Shinkansen was built to that spec, and they've only gotten lighter since (13t on E5s, and 11t on N700A/S series). Likewise having ridden a CR400A (Beijing to Shanghai) at 350 kmph and a TGV Duplex at 320 kmph-both with a 17t axel load limit, I can say there's no perceivable difference in smoothness between the two despite the latter running on Jacobs bogies. Likewise there has been a fatal derailment on the TGV, none of the 3 derailments in the Shinkansen (2 due to earthquakes and one a blizzard) have led to any fatalities. So I find the common claim of Jacobs bogies being safer and smoother being largely theory and not in practice (at least when it comes to high speed rail). As for highest capacity, I don't think the TGV is even close. The EuroDuplex sets can get up to 550'ish seats, with the 8 car being densest at 92 passengers. In fact the largest TGV derivative sets are in South Korea which operate larger 20 car sets and can carry around 930-960 passengers. Whereas on the Tokaido Shinkansen, 16-car 1300'ish passenger sets have been the norm since the 0-series first started operating (with highest density single decks being 100 passengers). Likewise for density, the E1 and E4 series double deckers had carriage capacities of 124 passengers in the densest carriage.
Each TGV Duplex can carry up to 634 passengers in the densest configuration (2+2 seats in every car) and TGV are frequently running coupled, that means up to 1268 passengers per train. That's not bad considering that the loading gauge of French rail network is considerably smaller that Shinkansen network. And Shinkansen trains have a 3+2 seating configuration in ordinary cars, few people like having the middle seat. Legroom is way better in Shinkansen trains though.
@@archie4oz Aside what the previous commentor mentioned, I also have to note that while the E1 and E4 MAX are bilevel, they only had a max speed of 240 km/h which is not true high speed (that starts at 250 km/h).
A comment on HSRs in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang here. HSRs to those provinces serves as a diversion of passenger services off major freight corridors. Inner Mongolia is a major producer of coal, so the regular railway lines are saturated with trains moving coal out from that province. The trunk railway line in Xinjiang is part of the BRI Sino-European freight route, which is saturated with container traffic. This diversion means both the passengers and the goods get better and more frequent services.
Worth pointing out that the reason you have to go through airport-style security to get on high speed trains in Spain is that a 9/11-style event occurred in Madrid on March 11th, 2004 involving.... you guessed it: trains!
Every other country: our network should be higher on the list! Germans: our network isn’t rated low enough! Jokes aside it would be a good idea to detangle the regional and intercity network even with new highspeed corridors of disruptions occur on legacy tracks into a station the delays can spread through what feels like half of the entire country… Aside from the tracks having been bottle necks for like 20 years into cologne for example and work on cologne deutz to add 2 more highspeed platforms to bypass at capacity cologne central doesn’t seem to move along at all
In my opinion Germany had to ranked higher because the quality of the trains is great with a restaurant, good seats and high speed lines all over the country. And the international lines aren‘t that bad. Usually every hour starts a train to every neighbour country😉 But the delays… But in general it‘s a good video!
I would agree. The complexity of the network within Germany is outstanding. And yes. Due to cost cuts 20 years ago the infrastructure of today does not provide enough capacity for all the services Deutsche Bahn has to ensure. So it's going to be a process of like 10 or 20 years to fix all the weak points.
Yeah, you might only be doing short 5-10 min bursts of high speed as you jump in and out of LZB corridors and they're literally always late as is normal for DB but you do have a very nice and luxurious train to ride in.
The german hsr trains are the nicest ive ever been in, unfortunately they can often be pretty slow compared to the international competition. For an experience of how incredible they could be ride the ICE 3neo from Frankfurt to Paris, the moment it hits the LGV its an incredible ride, much smoother and consistent than TGV + great food
Oh wow Morocco, impressive. Outperformed the US, Russia, India. Maybe spend more money on trains rather than nukes for a moment, that would be a good idea probably... Also, it would be great if you do a video on Africa
Interesting insights, as always! However I definitely wouldn't rank Spain as highly as Japan. I only have limited experience of the Spanish system, but the whole experience of using the trains (the scheduling, the location of stations, the quality of station buildings themselves, the ticket buying experience, having to go through security, etc) all seemed quite poor to me compared to the Shinkansen in Japan.
I'm Italian, I agree with your top 10! Certainly in Europe Spain has the best high speed network. Just a clarification: in Spain they also use Italian trains, in fact the Iryo company uses "Frecciarossa 1000".
Cool video! I kinda disagree about HSR to Inner Mongolia being excessive, apparently the region has 24 million people and it's not that far from Beijing so it doesn't seem like a long shot. Certainly overbuilding is better than underbuilding (looking at you US and Canada)
@@jaspertalwani4039 the biggest problem with overbuilding is that maintenance is still a thing so if it doesnt bring in enough profit its just useless and costly
I wouldn't call Spain's security system 'airport style', unless you are referring to airport security from the 90's. I found it to be pretty straightforward. Toss your bag onto a conveyor and walk through a metal detector. Took about 2 minutes.
@@cooltwittertag Not sure where you live. In the US you have to also take everything out of your pockets, separate out liquids and laptops from your luggage, take off your shoes, etc. None of that for the train.
@@gregford5971 seperating liquids is what someone does when packing anyways and other than that just having an open suitcase usually does the trick for EU flights
Couple notes: Taiwan's trains do 300km/h, not 350km/h; Siemens is pronounced Zeemens (pretty common Anglo mispronunciation); there is at least a fast train service from ICN to Seoul Station to catch a KTX (though a direct service would've still been nice, yes).
@@Urbanhandyman if it wasn’t a proper noun it wouldn’t be a big deal, but….Btw, it also bugs me when people say Shaenghai and not Shanghai, Darfur instead of Darfoor, etc. It’s about respecting others’ languages as a means of respecting their culture. Additionally, it’d be one thing if it was just in casual conversation, but this channel aims to make high-quality content on a specific subject matter; I’m sure Reece would rather be pronouncing things correctly if he’s not already.
Yes that was a slip of the tongue re Taiwan. I'm pronouncing Siemens how people pronounce Siemens in English because I am an English speaker. People working at Siemens generally say Siemens to me the way I said Siemens in this video.
I rode quite a few of these systems. The latest one is the Shinkansen, as my mission team rode the Hayabusa 107 train from Tokyo to Sendai, where we are serving in. We left Sendai after two weeks of mission work on the Hayabusa 108 train.
Great video as always! I disagree on your comment on Inner Mongolia, it has 23 million people with the provincial capital (Hohhot) having 2.3 million. Considering that the amount of people is half the total of most of the countries on this list, I'd say it's a pretty valuable high speed connection. Not to mention it's pretty close to Beijing so it out competes flights which can only be a good thing.
Finally, the video I was wondering if you would ever make, providing credit to China for committing and innovating. What you should followup with is how China has integrated Urban Metro, High Speed Rail and electrification of Bus, Trolly & Taxis/DiDi. By the end of the decade it is likely the virtually all public transportation in China will be electrified.
major cities around the world like Berlin have already announced to be fully electrified for all modes of public transport by 2030. What I am annoyed at is the lack of seperation between metro and commuter rail. Places like Shanghai have metro lines that are way too long and should be full frequent commuter lines instead.
Japan's HSR lines being rather lean makes sense, since over 90% of it is tunnel or overpass, both of which are time-consuming and costly to construct, not to mention making sure the overpasses are indomitable to earthquakes and the tunnels resistant to floods, mud-/rockslides, and avalanches. It may seem almost unfair looking at other countries that build much of their vast HSR network on level land. The convenience of no airport style security for shinkansen is understated in this video, I think.
The impressive part is that they managed to build the world's first HSR network, in Japan, a country that is known for its rugged and mountainous terrain. A vast difference from the flatlands of central France or Germany. Or the absolutely endless flatlands of the midwestern US.
there's a very good reason why France doesn't do EMUs : duplex trains. You can't fit all the propulsion system in a bi-level carriage so the TGVs keep their locomotives and duplex carriages separated. This way the train carries way more people for a given lenght than an single-level EMU.
This ranking could be a bit controversial as it's mostely based on opinions and the perception of the product by a foreign viewer. To me, it's almost impossible to rank such different services based on all their features combined. Each country decide to develop it's high speed network based on their need and constraints. For exemple: - Spain needs is to connect it's territory to the rest of Europe so they decided not to build a 1668mm network but to adapt it to the western Europe standards. As a consequence, running on legacy lines is rare. - France is a centralised contry so a big part of passengers needs is to connect provincial citys to Paris. So the network is designed for it. - On the contrary, Germany is a fully decentralised country and no corridor really stand out of the crowd like the Paris Lyon Marseille one in France. So their strategy is to uprade one by one each corridor with high speed lines or higher speed on conventionnal lines. To me, the only thing we can question is how the "high spped response" meets the needs of their territory. It's a very deeper question that maybe needs a 20 minute video for each country.
The most important corridor in Germany is along the Rhine! From the Netherlands to the Ruhr Valley, Cologne and the former capital Bonn over the middle Rhine valley which has two lines along each river's bank that are both at maximum capacity and another HSR line from Cologne to Frankfurt directly that is actually exclusively HSR. Then from Koblenz, the end of the middle Rhine valley, to Frankfurts Metropolitan area and also Darmstadt, Ludwigshafen, Mannheim... From there you travel along Freiburg, nearly hit Straßburg and finally finish at Basel. It's the densest and most industrial area in all of Europe, mostly located in Germany. And still the HSR network is lacking... Though there are upgrades on their way in the Ruhr valley (RRX Expansion If you want to look it up) and from Mannheim to Basel the line is also being expanded to 4 tracks and upgraded for 250km/h. But still, the linke Rheinstrecke from Cologne to Koblenz doesn't have ANY upgrade plans. And ETCS upgrades are progressing also quite slow to say the least
Great video as usuale, Reece! Congrats from Italy, where work is going on to finally complete that Milan - Venice hsr section, among others in southern Italy. I can't wait to see all of them completed; you will have to make another video about it when the work is over.
New line Napoli Bari 2027 Milan genoa 2025/6 Brescia Verona padova 2026 Salerno reggio Calabria 2030/203... Bologna rimini bari 2040 Messina bridge 2032
It's true that Spain's high speed train boarding makes you go through security but this is understandable given the past terrorist attacks that took place in Madrid... (over 100 people died in a train terrorist attack by Al Qaeda in 2004).
Totally agree that it's hard to do a ranking, because they are so many factors. For instance: I really enjoy the punctuality in Japans Shinkansen network, but it is expensive and only covers major cities on a long straight with a few branches. So yeah, the overall speed between Tokyo and Osaka is without any doubt higher than let's say between Berlin and Munich. But once you wanna travel between other cities, it's a totally different story. For example, the 224 km from Tsu (Mie) to Tottori, both prefectural capitals in Japan with 190-270k inhabitants each, takes a whole 4:30-5:15 hours by train (~50 km/h on average). In the end, useful infrastructure should reflect the circumstances. Most of Japans major cities are lined up beautifully? Go for it and build that line! Germanys population is really spread out? Build a grid instead of a line. Even if it's a 160 to 200 km/h grid, instead of a 300 km/h line^^
@@dinohermann1887 Not that much. One of the largest protests were the ones against the A49 but these weren't NIMBYs. I guess most of the NIMBYs are SUV drivers who need a lot of roads 😅
The security check in Chinese HSR system normally adds 3-15 minutes extra depending on station sizes and passenger flows, which is not a big deal because obviously there are always enough staff and almost no strikes unlike many European airports, for example, London Heathrow lol.
But then you have to reach the entrannce of the platform 15 minutes before departure or you will be denied entry (at least my experience at Guangzhou-nan High Speed Rail Station). So that's a total of 30 minutes. You don't even need to consider this in either Italy's and Taiwan's HSR.
@@allentchang Dude the station in Chengdu is huge. Sure you might be able to get onto the tracks in time if you rush, but you might not even be able to settle down in time before the wheels start rolling. I think the 15 minute rule is reasonable since nobody wants late passengers causing a train delay.
@@allentchangyou are crazy I've been taking China's HSR many many times. I have arrived even 15 minutes to the station multiple times and have never missed a train. The doors open 15 minutes before the departure and close like 3-4 minutes just before departure
A video about Stuttgart would be cool! Both because of the complete restructure of rail infrastructure going on right now and the weird u-bahn/tram hybrid :)
Having lived in both Japan and China, I will say that Japan has the better rail network in terms of user experience. However, despite Shinkansen being world famous, I think the true power of Japan's railway system lies in the rest of it. It is the super efficient and unbelievably extensive regular railways that made Japan's system the best in the world, not the HSR part. Also, I say Japan is the best purely based on user experience. I agree that, in an overall comparison, there are a lot more to it. I also don't think JR can do as good if you through the vast land of China to them, so overall I agree with the ranking in the video.
Italy - in the past there has been little appetite to expand HSR south of Salerno, because of insufficient demand. However now it looks like they are planning it.
the problem with southern Italy, the line from Salerno to Palermo is that is very expensive to build due to the morphology of the land, the bridge between Italy and Sicily is still not there. However the line between Bari and Napoli is under construction at the moment.
Last example: Brussels Roma distance in HST track: 1174 km. Best connection today: 12h40. At an average speed of 200 km/h, slower because of the Alps, without any stop it could be done in less than 6 hours!
7:00 It closed because literally no one was taking on that line. It's slow, the tracks ain't built for HSRs, there are already express & local trains connecting to Seoul station every 5 mins, there's no space for your luggage, and so on. The daily ridership was just 2.5K passengers in the entire line, which is lower than a daily ridership in a single KTX station serving a small city. It was simply like an Acela train but in Korea. 7:25 It's just because most major cities are in a single line, except for Gwangju which is at the West side of the country. They're planning a line called 'Dalbit Naeryuk HSR' which will connect Gwangju and Daegu, but it'll take a lot of time since it's a very expensive project. Non-HSR lines are still available across most of the country & There are many lines servicing outside of Seoul.
Whats also impressive about China's CRH is the speed. AFAIK its the only country where trains consistently go 350 kph. There are no tickets also, because you book with your ID. Your ID IS the ticket. Very reliable, you can even order food from the stations to be delivered at your next stop. The system is very China centric though, and it'll take some time to learn how it all works. The massive cookie cutter style stations are also quite impressive, I remember my Bluetooth buds started cutting out in I think Wuxi station, just due to the massive number of people using Bluetooth in the same space.
One thing about China other than what has been mentioned in the video, is that aside from airport security, is all tickets have assigned seats, which basically that booking in advance is needed and you’ll have to stick to your booking in many cases. And the service frequency at smaller stations can be pretty bad because there is no fixed service pattern
When the airlines start to cry about prices and competition from high speed rail, you know you hit the HSR nail on its head. The Beijing-Shanghai HSR route and its $80 economy class tickets basically set a price cap on the airlines and they cried to the regulators to allow them to set their economy class fares cheaper - now most Beijing-Shanghai air tickets are around $50 outside peak times. And that HSR line is already at maximum capacity the government is pushing for a second Beijing-Shanghai HSR line.
as someone who's previously stayed in sk, there honestly isn't really a need for the ktx branch to icn given the plethora of options we have (arex express and local, airport buses, the bee maglev, kakaotaxi) most of which would you get you there without much hassle and is pretty affordable as compared to say taking a ktx (ignoring the taxis and taking into account ktx trains are general 1.5 to 2 times more expensive then their regional and intercity counterparts)
Too bad Talgo lost the rights to the design of the front. The Talgo AVRIL G3 prototype looked great; the production AVRIL for Renfe looks as generic as they come.
As a german i wouldn't say NIMBYS and complex technical standards are the main reason for the high speed rail network not developing its full potential. The biggest problem is that Deutsche Bahn is heavily underfunded. The money needed for fixing those issues is estimated from 60 to even over 100 billion euros. And the german government/transport ministry has just announced couple of months ago that they will delay those necessary investments to 2070 (!), instead getting it done by 2030. Pretty embarrassing for Europe's leading economy. But i guess those things just happen if the minister of transport always appears to be a conservative or neoliberal car-centrist.
Native Korean here. Some pointers to the rail network of this country, perhaps incorrect in this vid: 1. The KTX to Gangneung, which passes through Pyeongchang and opened just in time before the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, is missing in the map. There are one or two minor lines also missing here and there, but let’s let that pass. 2. South Korea did start its high-speed tech from the French TGV, yes, and it was also quite late to EMUs. What should be corrected though, is that it’s already developed its own EMU - the KTX-EUM, aka the EMU-260. As implied in its name, it has a maximum operating speed of 260 km/h and commenced services in 2021. 3. The KTX line to ICN was ceased because it didn’t exactly offer that much of a speed advantage - yes, it was convenient for foreigners visiting directly to places with KTX connections other than Seoul, but for everyone else, it wasn’t that much an advantage. It used existing conventional rail lines to make the trip between ICN and Seoul, sharing part of its tracks with the Airport Express (AREX) which already links Seoul Station to ICN - so the speed isn’t that faster if you’re on a KTX. Not to mention the already-existing AREX that already makes the trip in a similar amount of time, yeah… it’s not so much an advantage. Regardless, though, it is pleasant to see South Korea’s high speed network receiving such coverage outside the country - after all, it is quite an underappreciated network, and - this comes from the guy who took the Acela from DC to Boston - it’s a billion times better than anything the Acela is going to offer anytime soon.
Incheon doesn't connect to KTX because the people that are flying into Incheon simply aren't leaving Seoul when they arrive. Incheon services long-haul international flights mostly, and very few people who come from outside Asia are immediately heading to Daegu or Busan. Business travellers aren't, tourists aren't, it would mostly be Koreans returning from abroad.
"Q. The California High-Speed Rail Authority was established 23 years ago. During that time China has built 16,000 miles of high-speed rail. We are still working on the first 119 miles. What are we doing wrong?" (nytimes 2018-01-18)
Both Italy and Germany suffer from a similar problem - Geography. Places are either very mountainous. Thus building a high speed rail line comes at extremely high costs. Or they are so densely populated, that it's not easy to find a route for the high speed rail in the first place. And sometimes, they are both. So you get places like the Rhein-Ruhr region with 11 million inhabitants, but not a single high speed rail line across. The high speed ends at the outskirts, and then the train runs on lines projected and built in the 1850ies. No, not 1950ies. 1850ies, when lines were designed to have steam engines at 70 mph running on them.
I agree completely with all of those rankings! For me, what the Chinese HSR does which most of the others don't is convincing people to use it instead of flying
yeah... is easy to convince people not to fly when you have no option (for shorter distances) I think France will also ban flights under 500 km if there is a HSR alternative.
China has many large cities with large populations spread over a wide area, and the demand for long-distance transportation is therefore huge. However, airplanes are expensive to operate, and if skyscrapers are used, such as in urban areas in China, airports are often located in the suburbs, making access inconvenient. On the other hand, high-speed trains can have stations near the center of a city, the boarding process is easier than airplanes, and the number of flights and the number of people that can be carried on a single train is enormous. As a Japanese person, a 10-minute security check after a 2-hour journey seems inconvenient, but since China is so vast, boarding time is longer on average than Japan, with only 10 minutes out of 4 hours. If you think about it, it doesn't bother you. In any case, I have to say that China's introduction of high-speed rail was a move of God.
Airport style security on Spain high speed network is due to March 11th 2004 terror attacks (Madrid train bombings). I do recall how the whole world changed after September 11th 2001...
It wasan't like that. the true meaning of a customs is due to failed attack in france of a young man carrying weapons in his bag. as high speed trains will end as bad as planes if they descarrilate
I agree that the french network is way too Paris-centric. But the whole country is like that. There is STILL no project to connect the East to the West, whether it's Bordeaux to Marseille and Nice, or Bordeaux to Clermont Ferrand and Lyon. You will have to make do with crappy night trains, or simply take a cheap flight... The main reason for that situation is that the regions between those major cities don't have major hubs themselves. In the South, you could definitely have Toulouse, Montpellier etc... but in the center, there's Clermont and that's about it. Périgueux, Brive or Ussel are small to medium sized towns (less than 50 000 people) with no university, no real industrial, touristic or cultural hub. Now, that is WHY there is no fast line there, but that is NOT a good enough reason. In the case of high speed rail lines, "build it and they'll come" is very true. Bordeaux has seen insane growth since the line to Paris went from 3h to 2h due to its recent improvement. Real estate there has gone insane.
As much as I love the French high speed system, the services on the Interconexxion Est have not been as successful as the SNCF hoped and the line remains underused. Ouigo's business model was originally to skip the Paris terminals and sell cheap tickets out of CDG airport, Marne-la-Vallée/Disneyland, and Massy-Palaiseau, but it turns out this made them less competitive with airlines (especially with French monocentrism), so now their approach is to just run a few trains a day out of the Paris terminals at inconvenient times when paths are cheaper. If SNCF wants to truly solve the Paris-centrism problem of their network while still running profitable services, they should dig a cross-city tunnel (they probably need another tunnel from Gare du Nord to Châtelet-Les Halles anyway). That said, most of the problems with their high-speed business (as well as Spain for that matter) could be solved by them just running more trains on more legible schedules, with cheaper and more consistent fares. As for Italy, they're an example of what France and Spain should do, but they also need to run far more trains with stops at FCO and MXP airports and should dig city centre tunnels in Rome and Florence
In Florence they're currently digging the HS tunnel which, along with the new Firenze Belfiore HS station, will allow a quick 'bypass' through the city without changing direction at Firenze Santa Maria Novella station which is now mandatory if the train calls at Firenze (and anyway current city rail link is too slow). While a HSR tunnel in Rome is not in the plans and honestly I do not think it will ever be, because tunnelling central Rome is a big issue, due to archeological reasons. As a matter of fact that's why building the central branch of metro line C is taking forever. Along with other Rome's peculiar political issues. Anyway Tiburtina station was designed to bypass the city without calling at Termini, to speed up the trains which did not terminate at Rome. And that was quite the way it worked when Rome-Naples HS line opened. But just for few years. Then they decided all the trains (with few exceptions) had to call both at Tiburtina and Termini even if that means to have longer travel times on the whole route, because Termini is better served by local transport, regional and national trains and because Milan-Rome is the most used route, so they decided to make every routes pass tese two cities main stations to attract more passengers. Hope in the future things will change. Last but not least, Milan. Milan is the 'center' of HS network and it is the main train hub in Italy. Even if to by-pass Centrale is possible just calling at HS gate stations or even calling at Porta Garibaldi through bypass platforms, Milan's rail ring is too crowded (much so Garibaldi link tunnel). Increasing the capacity of Milan's rail system is essential to solve the problem. That's why here a HS bypass tunnel was really taken into consideration. Unfortunately it wouldn't be cheap at all and it's not considered a priority, then I do not think they're gonna build it. Not in following decades at least.
Besides all the common reasons, there is actually a very specific-to-China reason why Chinese HSR stations are far from city center in undeveloped area. The land values near the HSR station will increase, and since the land are owned by the government, they can earn a lot by selling the land. This can also be seen in the planning of Chinese subways where some lines in the suburbs will intentionally avoid developed area.
I don't want to be overly apologetic for Germany, but one factor which is also often overlooked is geography. Germany, unlike e.g. France, isn't very centralised. Therefore it is difficult to build high speed corridors. Also, Germany has some very annoying mountains for high speed rail. There are some high speed tracks where TGVs couldn't even drive on, because there are to steep for them.
TGV's have the same gradient capabilities as most other high-speed trains and can run on all high-speed tracks as they follow roughly the same specs. I guess you're thinking of the Köln Frankfurt high-speed line, but it's within the capability range. The South-West / Med line in France between Paris and Marseille has gradients slightly over 35 per mil and the Eastern line has some high gradients too and TGV's run perfectly fine on these lines. And they also run on legacy lines with high gradients in the Alps, like the current line through the 19th century tunnel between France and Italy where freight trains have to double or triple their number of locomotives to be able to climb. TGV's run just fine as they are on this line. If it's a high-speed line, it should have gradients of maybe slightly over 40 per mil at the maximum as per international specs. I don't think any high-speed line in Germany exceeds that gradient and the international specs. And again, the centralized or not debate only has an effect on the layout / shape : star shaped layout vs grid shaped layout. A "parallel" model of continuous lines equipped with ample and full speed bypass tracks around cities and spurs to serve centers is entirely independent from the layout and can be applied on the grid layout that Germany's network follows just as much as it is on the star / radial layout of France and Spain. No one would ever think of pushing for a star shaped / radial layout in Germany, it would be stupid ! When some politicians or enthusiasts mention France or Spain as an example for high-speed lines, they don't think of, or push for the same layout, but for the same model / type of long, uninterrupted ultra fast backbone lines equipped with large bypasses around all cities along the corridor. A bit like the Köln Frankfurt line but super stretched, like starting at the Swiss border or near Freiburg im Breisgau, running *near* Manheim, Frankfurt, Köln, Düsseldorf, Krefeld, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund, Münster, Bielefeld, Hannover, Bremen and ending near Hamburg, bypassing every single city center in between. It would allow all types of services alongside each others and to never be blocked or slowed by other services. And a bottleneck in a city center station would only delay trains that stop there and not all the other trains in the corridor. Unlike on the current German network, when a bottleneck forms in a station due to saturation and delays the whole line. A continuous, interconnected network is also much more reliable and resilient, both in terms of maintenance and availability as it almost completely separates types of traffic. A grid layout and parallel model in Germany would roughly follow the current lines, with 3 main North-South uninterrupted corridors and 2 or 3 smaller East-West also uninterrupted "connectors" seamlessly interlinked to the vertical corridors. That way, a non-stop München to Hamburg sprinter service could run the distance at full speed in 3 hours or less. While other services could be run with a wide range of different stops patterns. With crazy high frequencies up to a train every 3 minutes on the HSL, like on some of the French and Japanese high-speed lines at peak hours. That would massively increase the capacity of the ICE network while freeing up tons of segments on the legacy network for regional rail and freight trains while also offering long distance travel times short enough to compete head-on with airlines and essentially replace all domestic flights and international ones to nearby countries. Also capturing a much higher share of the car driving public. Because currently, the ICE network is cracking at the seams, riddled with delays caused by saturation and bottlenecks in city center stations, and long distance city pairs take far too long to capture the entire domestic air market. The current, unconnected, high-speed stretches are limited by the legacy network and stations' saturation. There's so much potential to humongously grow the capacity of both the high-speed and legacy networks, drastically reduce travel times and capture the largest share of the market by (mostly) separating the high-speed and legacy networks (and avoiding city centers). Often, politicians opposed to any new high-speed developments in Germany tend to poison the debate by deviating the question towards the layout / shape when politicians that support a parallel model with a grid layout mention France or Spain as examples. I remember reading an entire article about this political tactic in Germany of poisoning the debate and pushing on the German sensitivity against centralism to create a false narrative and amalgam between the parallel / bypass model and the centralized star shaped / radial layout, even though they are two completely different things. A tactic used by politicians opposed to new high-speed lines, car industry lobbyists, etc. to discredit supporters and HSR supporting politicians and then end all discussions and potential projects. If I recall correctly, it was mostly the Bavarian CSU and also the CDU that used that tactic the most. It would be great if a clear and honest debate about new developments following the parallel / bypass model could take place in Germany without the interference of bad faith politicians and their deceitful tactics. Just imagine how great an uninterrupted, grid like network of 320kph fast backbone lines would be in Germany. It would be a revolution, a good one. As for the geography / geology, Spain has mountains and plateaus everywhere, the whole Southeastern quadrant of France is full of hills, mountain bases and complicated valleys. And the Northeastern part has a mid to low mountain range. So, it should not be more complicated than the Köln Frankfurt line. At 320kph, the line can make a little detour to avoid the most complicated terrain spots without losing much time. "Lost" time that the different bypass tracks going around cities make up for, several folds. In the meantime France and Germany are further developing their networks with new lines that are a bit more transverse, transforming their layout towards a radial and grid hybrid one. Proof that a grid layout and parallel / bypass model are perfectly compatible.
as someone from Japan, I disagree with this and recon Japan should be 1st again. It passes every test with flying colours, but everyone has opinions! Thank you for creating such entertaining videos, cant wait for more!
My reaction to Reece-cency bias 5:07 😂 (FFS it's not the right frame) Great video though 👌 There's definitely a lot that other countries can learn from this group's successes & failures.
I think you underrate HSR of Taiwan. Among these HSR systems, the punctuality and safety are among the best, just like father, like son. The punctuality is even better than Japan, with just less than 10 seconds of average delay, even far ahead of that of Japan (26 sec)! Moreover, since its operation starting in 2007, there is NO single accident causing any injury to human. This is a huge achievement no one can excel except Japan! And the HSR line of Taiwan is one of the very few HSR lines that can make profit, even during COVID! And as for the convinience, yes not few of the stations are located quite far away from downtown but as least stations of Taipei, New Taipei and Kaoksiong to a lesser extent are located in downtown areas. Even though the station of Taichung is located in the periphery of its urban area, it's situated at the transport hub of Taichung and even central Taiwan that can travel 10 mins to nearer Changhua City, far faster from the station of Changhua. And you can take a bus to the new downtown of Taichung just less than 20 min via the nearby expressway. And the design of Taichung Station is very great that the bus stops are just right downstair of the HSR station in the indoor area. That means you don't need worrying raining weather and you can have a very short walk (maybe 2 min or even less) to go to bus stations. In short, Taiwan HSR adopts very strict and high standard of Japan and EU combined so that the rolling stocks are of very high standard that the cost is quite high but also the quality is high in retern. Taiwan HSR should be worth earning much higher ranking, at least top 5!
I am going to Taiwan in 2 weeks and will travel from Kaohsiung to Taipei on HSR, let me check it out. Talking about punctuality, Chinese HSR always arrives & leaves on time to the seconds, you may want to check out.😅
as a note on what you said about spain, its true they have an airport type control but it is really quick and easy, and even in the biggest stations like atocha in Madrid i have arrived less than 10 minutes before my train starts and made it easily if you know the station a bit
Shame Queensland's Tilt Train didn't get a mention. It's the only narrow gauge high speed rail network in the world, utalises both electric and diesel powered trains, and has a unique tilting design which allows it to reach speeds of 210km/h on narrow gauge tracks.
Rode Italy's Italo in 2014, and Spain's Ave last summer. Was surprised at how bumpy the Italian rails were compared to the Spanish. But they're both seriously cool
I read from the news saying it reached 347km per hour during the test run and it is ready to go. Not sure why Indonesia government still holds on to it.😅
You forgot one line in Korea that goes Seoul to Gangneung, It's not 300km/h but still, its 250km/h. That line was built for Olympic. (about a quater of buget alocated for Olympic was constructing this line) The sole reason why Inchean Airport KTX existed was Olympic. Although, that line exceeded expected ridership after Olympic as Gannueng became new hot local tourist spot, since now its closer to see ocean compared to Busan from Seoul. It carried more people after Olympic the next year of Olympic.
5:25 Another problem. We don't have overtacking tracks I mean they are better than 4 track constellation, because you can built also high speed switches in it to let trains overtacke and we are not punctal/on time at all.
The Japanese actually experimented with gauge-change trains, but were hamstrung by the issue they were going between standard and narrow gauge, rather than broad to standard. The reduced amount of space to work with led to all sorts of issues arising with the bogies. They never got out of the testing phase. What we got instead are the 'Relay' limited express trains to fill gaps in the network when these have existed - mostly in Kyushu (such as the Relay Kamome). They could have kept working on the issues, but they probably figured in the end it was easier and cheaper overall to keep lobbying prefectural governments (*cough* Saga Prefecture *cough*) to sign up to a standard Shinkansen build. When JR West decided to go for a full Shinkansen build between Tsuruga and Osaka (and struck out the Kosei Line upgrade option), that was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for gauge-change trains in Japan, at least for now.
Not as much service as many of the networks, and the connectivity is still lacking. I think given the expertise being built in the country it will probably be much better in 5-10 years. Probably surpassing a few western Euro systems.
5:03 that's one big problem, the ICEs often don't accelerate to their top speed because of the network and because it wouldn't make sense because there are too many stops in smaller cities.
Thanks for making this understandable for me. If it's not a top ten list, I just can't make sense of it at all
The race is now on to see who makes the inevitable “Top 10 Transit Expert-made Top 10 Lists” video first
Pin/heart please
I knew this was the gateway drug to RMTransit for you in the first place
@@Urbanhandyman That would actually be an interesting one, I wonder how many you could even find in the world :)
When are we going to see your top 10 urbanist railway stations video?
As an Italian, it's not important to be first, it's important to be above France
As a Spaniard, I sympathise 😂😂
@@Albert24346 OH...GROS MECHANTS!,..
EXCUSE ME WHAT! JAPAN IS WITHOUT DOUBT THE🥇🏆🎌
BS. VIDEO 😂
i dont even know why you are though, i guess the service quality is better but all connections to the HSR suck, italian slow rail is the worst i have ever experienced in europe.
At this rate, any standard of decent high speed rail from abroad is better than American standards. The NEC needs better service. It’s the best in the country and it’s not even real HSR. I use the Acela and regional to travel between NY and Boston all the time and it’s a nice service, but it could be better
In Spain we have security to boarding high-speed trains due to the terrorist atacks of 2004, the fear of having an explosion at 290 Km/h was very significant and they decided to have security, however, is much faster that airports, no more than 2 minutes.
This is partly why it was also introduced extensively in China (2014 Kunming Station Terrorist Attack, among others). Entering the railway system in China was a lot easier prior to that attack
@Seran I'd complain as well ... and being German I definetly see HSR quite often (and used to ride it on a daily basis) ...
That sorta fear is just pointless. It's an inconvenience for everybody and won't stop anybody determined since it's far too casual to actually be secure. It's the sorta "we must show we're doing something!" policy. Doesn't make sense. Do it anyway.
@@Sp4mMe I don't think that's true. there's a clear barrier of difficulty caused for someone trying to bring a backpack filled with 12 kg of nitroglycol. backpacks have to be put through the scanner, without them nobody would detect those bombs. it's not just fear-mongering, it's an actual effort to stop future catastrophic events.
@@danny8371 So instead put them on train tracks. Or right outside the security barriers at busy times. Or use non-detectable or harder to detect methods (that youtube probably won't appreciate talking about), or just plain force.
And most obviously just don't do it on a highspeed train; do it elsewhere then. How about a school? Maybe a bus? A busy market?
It's nonsense. This achieves nothing; there's no point in special protection for this one specific case of terrorist attack that hasn't even happened yet (was local trains after all) and that has no specific reason to occur over any alternative ...
10th Morocco 1:17
9th UK 2:17
8th Taiwan 3:14
7th Germany 4:25
6th Korea 6:00
5th France 7:59
4th Italy 9:22
3rd Japan & Spain 10:23
1st China 12:24
Very unsurprised but still disappointed there arent any north american trains. Even the best ones like MTL can't compete
Thanks god he mentioned China and those who downloaded his videos to their “RUclips” Bilibili will be greatly disappointed
@@yemmohater2796 To be fair, the only line which is HSR on the Americas is the NEC and even that is only made out of upgraded tracks (lower requirements for HSR by UIC standards) and on top has a major bottleneck at Connecticut.
@@yemmohater2796 It's high speed rail not metro
@@yemmohater2796hardly surprising given the dysfunctional gov for the past years .. and also lack of priority for important civilian infrastructure, especially for rail
As a Spanish I can say that airport security is not really "airport security". In just 5 minutes you've gone past it, is like the security at the entrance of official government places, just a bag scanner and a police officer there watching.
yes, why do all youtubers make such a big fuss about it? You don't have to take your belt or shoes off, nor remove liquids or electronics from the suitcase... Just run your suitcase through a scanner and it never takes more than 5 minutes (in my town it normally takes 2 minutes). A totally different experience from the airport security.
As a Brit currently in China, I've been so impressed by the trains here.
What's just as impressive is the supporting infrastructure they've built to make the network so well connected. They've built endless bridges and tunnels in the most difficult places.
Yes, there is a security check, but it's pretty quick. Just like in Spain.
wait. How did you get access to youtube in china. Isnt it banned
@@uzin0s256 vpn
Indeed, currently working in China and just got back from a 21 days business trip 3 days ago, the distance between stations to the city centre is quite different, it all depends on the planning of the local government and the economy of the local area. For bigger cities, the stations are located closer to the city centre and for smaller cities the stations are much farther away. The stations located in Beijing, Shanghai, Jinhua, etc are situated in the city centre or are very close to it. Major cities would also have multiple stations, with various distances from the city centre. Most noticeably when I first went to Jinan, I bought a ticket to the Jinan East Station, It was a two-hour drive to the city centre, and the second time I went there I bought the ticket to the Jinan Station, I walked to my hotel (took me 10 min).
@@uzin0s256 It's never banned, you just can't access it without VPN because Google doesn't want to keep Chinese user data on Chinese soil and Chinese government also has a strict policy over nude/violent content which Google doesn't want to comply.
@@uzin0s256 I am Chinese and I am in mainland of china,youtube is illegal here,so i use some technological tools
I would consider HS1 in England to be the northern end of the LGV Nord line in France. It is built to French rather than British specifications though they are quite similar, and its main purpose is to allow Eurostar trains to reach London, and Eurostar is basically the international division of SNCF. South Eastern Railways high speed services from London to Kent only exist because the line was built anyway from the Eurostar budget, it has spare capacity, and they may as well use it for something; otherwise it wouldn't have been the top priority for investing in high speed rail services.
Some French specs in terms of sections of signalling and catenary etc. yes, but would have been insane not to build it to those specs considering it was funded by the British government to connect to Paris first and foremost, though a 300 km/h line to Kent would definitely not have been on the list of successive Tory governments otherwise ha (sold their share of Eurostar for spare money lol) -
the Eurostar monopoly needs to die asap with more competition - way underused and overpriced
Having the UK on this list is absurd to me. Sure, travelling on HS1 is great, but it's hardly relevant to 99% of people in the country. While I appreciate the measure is quality rather than quantity, it strikes me that location is part of that equation. As for the 200 km/h lines their quality is pretty poor with a number of operators running some of the most unreliable services in the country, while the fares are at or above those for true high speed on the continent.
I guess getting a whole top ten is difficult though.
@@jockcox When the union disputes are finally settled, maybe we will see a return to reliable train travel. But also the ranking may be based on future developments, in which case HS2 will definitely put the UK in atleast 9th place.
You say that but there is quite a lot more British specifications than French specifications. The was not built with the Eurostar budget, since Eurostar service could happily run on the third rail network into Waterloo. Also HS1 was built for freight traffic which is something which French high speed lines are not built for and also all equipment is to British standards, for example the Interlocking on HS1 is completely different to LGV Nord and the Channel Tunnel. Even the OLE is built to British versions of the French OLE to make sure it would work in britain. Also there was always plans for higher speed Kent services. The colour light signalling is to British Standards on HS1 and not French standards.
The most frustrating thing about HS2 is that the people most vociferously opposed to it were the ones directly responsible for driving up the costs so much, which they then use as evidence why it should be scrapped. Environmentalists and NIMBYs formed an unholy alliance to challenge it at every turn, massively increasing the legal and land acquisition costs of the project, and forcing more of it to be laid in expensive tunnels as a response to their (mostly) bogus concerns.
Still others whine "the money could be spent on improving local and regional services", completely failing to understand that HS2 is designed to relieve congestion on the West Coast Main Line, allowing more capacity for local services.
Damn nimbys, I hate them so much.
Absolutely, the West Coast Mainline is full and no amount of "digital railways" will fix it. The other thing they also miss out is removing the "fast trains" from the West Coast will vastly increase the number of local and intermediate journey trains the line can carry. The biggest miss here is not taking HS2 under Manchester Piccadilly allowing east-west travel to other destinations and NPR. There's only one west/north facing terminating platform in Manchester city centre (which can only take a 4 carriage train). Meaning almost all journeys to the north or west need to be through trains adding to the unreliability of services.
What’s a nimby
@@user-op8fg3ny3j Not In My Back Yard
@@user-op8fg3ny3j Not In My Back Yard
@@user-op8fg3ny3j "Not in my backyard"
The reason Spanish stations have airport-style security is because of the Madrid terrorist bombings of commuter trains back in 2004. Japanese stations don't do this because they obviously don't have this problem. That aside, we are proud of the high-speed system of our southern Korean brothers. We hope that when we reunify, the system will be able to expand to the rest of the peninsula. And a huge kudos to China's HSR network. Being able to expand so fast, on top of accounting for two-thirds of ALL of the world's HSR, is an incredible feat. They've shown that being a big country with different environments doesn't matter and built a huge network anyway. They believed and never gave up. This should be a wakeup call for the US to follow.
Also, you missed the Seoul to Gangneung portion of the KTX map at 6:11 that was opened for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang! That helped so many people get to the Games!
saying this about japan is funny since tokyo removed all its trash bins out of fear of terrorism. I just dont see the point in acting like that, since you're just gonna change how terrorism works, not if it happens. They will just attack tracks instead if they wanted to.
lmao South Korea has never been and will never be part of Japan.
As a Spaniard I must say our airport style security check at stations isn't that much of a problem, it usually takes less than 15 minutes in the worst of cases which is a bit disturbing but won't make much of a difference
And with your history of terrorist attacks I get why you want some extra security on trains
Well, high speed trains in Spain have never suffered terrorist attacks, the only succesful attacks that we know happened on commuter trains.
@@chukty That's exactly the reason why Spanish commuter networks suck and HSR works so well
similar case in China, at least for now security checks for trains is alot quicker than that of planes. there are annoying exceptions though, but most of the times arriving 30min before departure is enough.
@@myles_c5062 Also location wise, Chinese hsr stations are still located far closer to city center than Chinese airports
While visiting relatives in 2018, we took the high-speed rail from Beijing to Shanghai. The experience was incredible. The distance was the same from Detroit to Jacksonville, Florida, and it took four hours! My wife left a cup of water on the windowsill, and there was not even a ripple from any sort of train shaking. To me, it is the standard for high-speed rail!
You erected a coin there near the window, it won’t fall down.😅
Thank you for actually trying it instead of listening to some random nonsense like most other people are here in the comments.
It’s amazing that there can even be a top 10 HSR video. 20 years ago it would have been a much different discussion. Were there even 10 HSR countries back then? I wonder what the world will look like 20 years from now.
There are curently in preparation HSR projects in Poland and Czech Republic. And Rail Baltica is curently under construction.
Rest assured, it will still be China in 20 years, China will build high-speed rail to 70,000 km by 2035, now it is 4.5w km. By 2025, China will run 450-600 km/h high-speed rail, and China's high-speed rail ticket price is the cheapest and most stable in the world.
Seems generous to put the U.K. in the top ten.
If you count 125mph as HSR, which a lot of people do, then the UK has a big HSR network.
I imagine poland, turkey and morroco will overtake the uk, as hs2 has taken so long to get started and built.
@@kwlkid85 It also is HSR by the UIC standards as upgraded tracks (which most of them are) have a lower requirement to be considered high-speed instead of new tracks (same reason why the US has HSR despite no track surpassing the speed limit of 250+ km/h).
Ey, it has lots of pretty fast trains
Not that many countries have high speed rail
As a Moroccan, I am grateful for including my country in your top 10 list. While I acknowledge the potential benefits of directing the funds towards updating the existing rail infrastructure, I must emphasize that our current system has been incredibly successful among both domestic riders and international visitors. In fact, it has prompted the government to expand the system further, reaching other major cities and tourist destinations, including the southern regions of the country. These expansion efforts will be implemented alongside the existing conventional rail infrastructure in Morocco.
Spain has a massive and super-efficient high-speed network, you can travel from one point of the country to another in less than 3h, it has the world's second-biggest network just behind China and it is currently upgrading all the trains and stations making it looking top-notch. The reason why you have to go to security as the airport (even tho it's not quite like it) it's due to the 2004's terror attacks in Atocha -Spain's main high-speed hub in Madrid-, it's currently the worst terror attacks in the history of whole Europe, around 200 died.
The thing about Germany is that citys are many but not that big. I believe that it makes it difficult to build high speed rail lines, since there are so many places to either through or around
A lot has to do with line congestion and nowhere to put new right of way, Germany has probably the most extensive conventional rail network in the world so most of their HSR buildout is doing incremental improvements to LZB corridors to allow increased speeds usually of 250km/h.
the largest city in germany houses around 5% of the population, for japan its 33%, for Korea its 50%, for France its 20%. Germany would have to build a system like China, which has plunged the raulways into massive debts
Bit of a controversial opinion perhaps, but I'm a big fan of prioritizing fast conventional rail over true high speed rail. Conventional rail does a great job of serving much larger numbers of people, making trains much more accessible for large parts of the country. In fact, I'd argue that conventional rail is an absolute prerequisite for good high speed rail service, since it makes it easier to access those high speed trains all the while serving huge numbers of different trips. HSR also has a very dangerous "flashiness factor" that makes it a very appealing prestige project for politicians. Not a single politician is gonna put "several incremental improvements that ensure better and more consistent train service to a larger number of people" on their resume, which is kinda the point. HSR has the risk of draining the rest of the train network of resources.
I'd use Acela if our *regional* rail were better at getting me there.
You can do both (if you can afford it naturally). In italy for example we also have intercity services serving the same routes as high speed trains but running on conventional tracks at speed up to 200 kph, and stopping at medium/big cities not served by high speed
That is exactly the problem systems like the one in spain and france have. They have a great high speed system but the rest of the public transportation outside the big cities is really lacking and constantly underfunded. Thats great for tourists and business travelers but wont help a single bit towards getting more people to switch their primary mode of travel away from the car
@@antoniovitellaro China also has a large conventional rail system with some trains running up to 160km/h, as well as D trains that run up to 250km/h that can run on a mix of dedicated high speed lines and conventional lines.
@@Urbanhandyman I did that on purpose, since speed really isn't the only factor in what makes trains fast. A frequent train that serves a lot of stops can be a fast way of travelling, even if it doesn't reach crazy speeds. Here in the Netherlands, most trains don't exceed 140 ish km/h, but we have a good backbone intercity network, and local trains that make every stop, meaning it's often comparable to cars, or fast enough.
A HSR line without a good supporting network is basically handicapped from the start. It's s car- and plane-brained transit solution.
Sad that u missed some Korean HSR corridors in the map, such as Gyeonggang-line from Gangneung to Seoul, but still a very good summary of pros and cons of the whole system!
Korea have long been a very capitol-centric country, especially after the economic crisis in late 1990s. Governmental organisations and major businesses started to invest almost exclusively in Seoul and surrounding cities. Since then, population is rapidly growing in nearly all cities in Seoul Area, while all the other regions are facing severe decrease in number of residents, due to lacking infrastructure and job opportunities.
Recently (already quite late tho) the government noticed the importance of 'balanced' national development, trying to invest in regions outside of the Greater Seoul. Such investments involve several railway projects - including high-speed rebuilding of Gyeongjeon-line, an east-west railway corridor in Southern part of the country. These investments are still far from enough considering how much money is being poured into the Seoul region at the same time, but can be a good starting point.
+ about the KTX to Incheon airport: the KTX heading to the airport used to take a huge detour, stopping at at least one major station in the Seoul city centre. (despite being called as 'Seoul'-Incheon int'l airport, the airport itself is located in a seperate municipality) For a better airport connection, local governments are planning to create a second air-rail link, cleverly named 'second airport express railway', from the airport to Incheon station. From there, the line is also planned to be connected with existing HSR network through Suin-Bundang line.
Very cleverly named! Yes, my Korea HSR map was a little incomplete. :(
I thought the 2nd airport rail link will be the GTX Line D from Incheon Airport to Gangnam district because there is currently no direct airport connection to Gangnam. I read before that GTX-D will be a Y-shaped line with one branch going to Incheon airport. Is this still going to push through?
@@lawrencebautista1 GTX-D's extension to ICN airport is being considered as a seperate project than second airport rail express, with a totally new undersea tunnel!
I personally think extension of GTX is a bit of overkill and the budget should be spent on the rest of the country, since line 9 and current AREX is still working on their through-running project, which allows the direct connection bw airport and Gangnam. tho no one knows when, and considering the potential demand, GTX-D can be feasible for Gangnam aswell.
@@Lowspecgames-lr2qz oh I see. So Line 9 is planned to have 'through service' with AREX line hence this necessitates extending Line 9 westward to link with AREX. I'm a bit skeptical about this because Line 9 is already notorious as the most congested subway line in Seoul since it only operates maximum 6 cars. And it took a while before it was expanded from 4 to 6 cars. Although the side tracks and platforms of Line 9 for express services can also be used by a Line 9 airport express.
Good reasoning for a lot of these!
Suggstions inspired by watching.
1. After the remark about the lack of high speed integration in Germany: Would love a video on DB in general. I have seen few videos on its network compared to Switzerland, Italy, or France.
2. Mentioning poor connection to Germany: Video discussing the integration high speed rail services in Europe (and to coutnries next to Euroep), in terms of timetable, train standards, and fares.
3. Also would love video on potential of high-speed sleeper trains! This absolutely needs to be considered in US (but in Europe too) for trips like NY-Florida, NY-Chicago, NY-Toronto, NY, San Francisco-LA, etc.
High speed trains are extremely noisy machines. Having them functioning in the middle of the night would create massive problems for surrounding communities.
Sleeper trains don't need to be high-speed. In 8-10 hours you can get across all of Europe with 200km/h even with stops. You just need sleeper trains that do those 200km/h on the HSR network
@@Desi365 This isn't totally untrue. I am curious, though, do you have this opinion because you live next to a rail line?
The other thing is, you could apply the same logic for highways (the current US alternative to night trains), which are arguably louder to nearby residences, and where cars and trucks can come by constantly all night.
The thing about high speed night trains is that 1) at most they would only come through an area couple times per night, the noise only lasting ten or so seconds.
Also, if trains were passing through residential areas, they would likely have to slow down anyway, mitigating a lot of the potential noise. I find it unlikely that new grade seperated high speed rail capable routes will be driven through dense neighborhoods where there would be big disruption.
Just my opinion, not saying your wrong, no hard feelings.
@@J-Bahn no, i don't live next to a train line. But the SNCF had a study years ago showing that having high speed trains circulating during the night was unfeasable, in reality. The idea was to transport mail, i think.
Lots of good ideas! Stay tuned!
A suggestion for the next Top 10 video. Top 10 Tram/Light rail systems in the world.
Cologne for the win! Or not because the city is to poor to make the Stadtbahn actually good
Interesting idea!
Spain has security controls in high speed train stations because they already had terrorism in a station in madrid, Atocha. This security check is only made for high speed travels and it only takes 1 minute, it's just passing your suitcase through a detector and picking it up. Anyways, i think that isn't a bad aspect, instead it is a good one because it makes a lot more safe the travel and it makes sure there can't be blades, knifes or even guns in trains. In my opinion, that should be a basic feature in every country with high speed trains.
One of the perks of Italian high speed rail network is that even if it's small, due to the peculiar shape of our country it still manages to connect most important cities. And this is incredibly great on its own because in many other countries they need several lines to do so. Not to mention that our cities attracts lots of tourists and HSR basically put these cities on a single line. Sure, the South is not connected yet, but it will, the project is ongoing. Currently there is another line in construction connecting Napoli to Bari.
And they are also profitable, they contributed to the bankruptcy of Alitalia!
as Swiss i was really impressed by the Italian high speed trains, quality, service, comfort and to my surprise😁on time!
@@askallois Alitalia was bankrupt for the whole 30 years previous.
The State tried magic tricks and to summon demons in order to save that company. But never worked.
In the end the best thing we can do is leave it fail and make a new one.
Suprise not to mention Italy as the first country to open the high speed rail market for competition.
While China has high speed sleeper, it's service is limited to only a few lines and no more new trains are built, which I think should deserve more focus as this is perhaps the only way to compete with planes in such large distance in China such as Guangzhou - Beijing
No company wants to operate there...
@@axwleurope9519 because italo and Trenitalia are competitive and have good prices for what they offer
Start of the video: It's not necessarily China
End of the video: But it is China 😅
😂 right
The point was regarding not assuming that China is fist because it has the most kilometers of HSR. He was emphasizing quality over quantity. Apparently, in his educated opinion, China has BOTH!
@@barryrobbins7694 China’s HSR is actually one of the best in terms of quality, it is clean, secure, has zero accidents, it always leaves on time to the seconds…if you erect a coin near the window, it won’t fall down but it failed the test with Japanese HSR. And lastly it is affordable, for example, the distance from Beijing to Shanghai of 1318 km only costs 69 Euro and travel time is 4.5 hours. The HSR train station in China is huge and has up to 40 platforms, bigger than the airports in many countries.
@@icebaby6714distances of 800km on ICE can be traveller for around 20-30€ as well, its just a lot slower by comparison
@@icebaby6714i was actually quite impressed once i noticed just how cheap DB can be compared not just to european operators but around the world
About Southern Italy:
The HS network (250>km h) ends in Salerno, south of Naples. However, from Salerno to Reggio Calabria (the southernmost point of peninsular Italy) there is already a very modern and fast railway of 200kmh. Within the year they will start building two new tracks, for 1/3 of the entire section, at HS 300kmh. Thus the Salerno - Reggio section will be a railway with speeds of 300kmh for 1/3 and 200kmh for the remaining 2/3.
To the east of Naples, in the direction of Puglia, the Naples - Bari AV/AC is already under construction and the works should end in 2027. This line will have a maximum speed of 250kmh and the longest railway tunnel in Italy will be present on the section (27km) on a par with the "Genova Milano HS" tunnel, also 27km long
In Sicily, on the other hand, they are building a new and modern regional line (Palermo-Catania-Messina) with speeds of 160-200kmh and it is hoped that it will be connected to the national high-speed network via the "strait bridge" more than 3km long
So basically Sicily's 5 million inhabitants are not getting any true HS. Idk why but we tend to forget that the busiest domestic air routes are the ones from Rome to Palermo (5th largest city in the country) and Catania (10th largest), and simply the absence of true HS on these corridors makes them a valid connection only to Reggio Calabria, 150k inhabitants. Let's add that the line also passes through Naples and connects Sicily to the most industrialized metropolis and educational centre (of the South, ofc).
The Naples-Bari is basically a faster conventional line that ends in Foggia, half way to Bari. From then on, you travel on the line covering the most populated area in northern Apulia. That's why it will take 2 hours for 260 km.
Sicily is basically getting its convential railways upgraded to standards that are normality in the mainland under the name of high speed. Great marketing operation, not the best for the island.
And that just concerns the South, we're not even talking of the Adriatic, of the North-East, of Liguria or of Sardinia that has it worst of all of us. Yay
@@Hastdupech8509 In sicilia per ora non ha senso una AV perchè mancano ancora le linee convenzionali. La AV si fa dove ci sono già due binari che hanno quasi raggiunto la saturazione e per questo motivo se ne costruiscono altri 2 in aggiunta a quelli esistenti per separare il traffico regionale da quello lunga percorrenza, poi viene da se che se devi costruire due nuovi binari in aggiunta a quelli esistenti, quelli nuovi li fai predisposti per l'AV.
Considera poi che l'alta velocità funziona fino a determinate distanze, superate queste, l'aereo è il mezzo più logico.
Esempio:
AV
Milano - Roma 570km 3h
Catania - Roma 800km 5h/5h 30 (con Salerno - Reggio AV + Ponte + nuova Messina/Catania in costruzione)
Come vedi la distanza Catania/Palermo - Roma è troppa per far si che il treno vinca di netto sull'aereo ma è comunque sufficiente per creare un traffico ferroviario importante. Però, anche con tutte le opere necessarie, un viaggio in treno dalla durata di 5/5h30 non può scalzare il viaggio in aereo.
Considera poi, tornando alla questione "perchè non fanno una vera AV in sicilia?", che a fare la differenza sui tempi di percorrenza sulla tratta sicilia - roma che oggi si fa in 10h (Intercity Catania-Roma) é:
1) ponte sullo stretto: risparmio di 1h e 30/2h
2) Lotti essenziali Salerno - Reggio C: risparmio di circa 1h
3) Meno fermate (Ipotizzando un servizio frecciarossa con poche fermate): risparmio ipotetico di circa 30/40 minuti
4) Nuova Catania - Messina: risparmio di 30minuti
Una AV 300kmh Catania - Messina (95km), al massimo farebbe risparmiare altri 10 minuti ma ad un costo spropositato.
90 km di nuova AV in un contesto orografico complicato come quello tra messina e catania verrebbe a costare circa non meno di 8 miliardi!
Ha senso spendere questa cifra per risparmiare 10 minuti di tempo?
Le uniche due cose utili per velocizzare i collegamenti in Sicilia, oltre a quello che si sta già facendo o che è in programma di realizzazione, sono il completo raddoppio tra Catania e Palermo e il raddoppio completo e velocizzazione tra Palermo e Messina. Non serve nessuna vera linea AV, bastano le velocizzazioni fino a 200 km/h...
@@d1234as esattamente, chissà quanto tempo deve passare ancora per il raddoppio completo della Palermo - Messina. Credo che rimarrà con quel buco di 80km a binario singolo per ancora tanto tanto tempo
Big cities in China tend to have more than one train station one of which is usually centrally located. So, if one was planning to travel in China and preffered to arrive at a central location then they should look for a suitable option. It could cost more than a trip from /to one of the staions from the periphery and availability is usualy limited.
市中心的那个火车站往往是最老的，运行旧式绿皮火车，城市扩大了，旧车站就变成了在市中心，城市边缘的往往是新修的车站，大多运行高铁
A big reason why Germany doesn’t rank higher on this list is the German car industry lobby. Germany invests too much in highways compared to the rail network.
Spain has excellent high roads and excellent hst network
@@axwleurope9519 They don't have a (large) automobile industry like Germany does. Germany is really biased towards cars, if you asked me.
@@dinohermann1887which is why its important that part of our constitution is guaranteed intercity train service
Not sure if ranking HSR Systems like this makes sense.
Yes, China's HSR is impressively fast if you need to go from one end-point to the other. On the other side, the German ICE system for example is simply not designed to do that - it was never the desired to go non-stop from Hamburg to Munich and skipping all the big cities in between. If you want to fo from a medium-sized to another medium-sized town, for example, your connection is likely much better in Germany than in France or China.
There are simply very different conditions and very different goals here, so that the two systems can simply not really be compared.
Fully agree with your comment. Also, in cases like Italy and France you see what happens, if you only focus on high speed but need ages to get to your final destination because local trains are underdevelopped or non-existent.
What even made you think Chinese HSR goes from end-point to end-point non-stop? It is freaking ridiculous considering your whole point is based on such absurd assumptions purely out of wishful ignorance. It is like you made whole point because you don’t like China being ranked No.1 on his list therefore literally made things up and stretched an argument because you don’t actually know anything about the subject matter.
@@nehcooahnait7827but I'm pretty sure that the Chinese HSR doesn't stop in what feels like hundreds of cities that have less than 1 million inhabitants. And that IS the case in Germany.
Still however there are the ICE Sprinter trains and many more planned that will connect all the major cities even faster than they already do currently by skipping many smaller stops.
I think the great thing about RUclips is that I can make a video like this in the first place.
@@RMTransit Indeed, thanks for the great video and making the effort of ranking. whats more we learn a lot about the different HSR-strategies in the ranked countries. I would rank this as being the most interesting point.
What you didn't mention about France is that those TGV lines are very busy. Like a fully packed double decker TGV train leaves Gare de Lyon every 5 minutes or so. All the services to Switzerland and Italy leave that station, as well as the most of the lines going south. There's also few long distance slow trains in France, because for the vast majority of trips the TGV is so fast it makes sense to go all the way to Paris up one arm of the TGV network and then down another. Because of the frequency of the TGV trains, they have a very high minimum speed for all trains on those lines. They want to keep the slower tracks for local services and freight. They also do a great amount of integration with buses, so if there's a small destination near a train station, there's probably a dirt cheap bus that can get you there.
Forgot to add that there is long-distance, cheap, slow service in France. It's called a bus lol
Wasn't a key motivation for TGV to increase capacity on some lines that the government saw getting congested?
Yeah, I agree. I’m not too sure why Italy above France is on his list. I would swap them around, based on what you’ve mentioned about the service frequencies and the HS trains overall in France, especially with the different types of TGVs with the single only deck and double deck trains
@@iiExplosionz12 Even Spain is questionable, France saw four times the ridership of Spain's high speed lines!
It’s funny to see French pride over totally normal stuff
@@DavidVargasCarrillo Justified when you look at the numbers, like he mentioned lol
It is a bit upsetting to constantly hear you have to go through "airport style security" to ride a high-speed Spanish train. It is basically a scanner for your baggage, you have to get rid of your coat, period. You do not have to go yourself through a scanner, get rid of your belt, or any of that. It takes 2 minutes, as anyone who has tried it can attest. Hardly the inconvenience people seem to think it is.
And some recognition of the 2004 Madrid train station bombings that killed 193 and injured 2,000 people would have been good
China is basically the same. It's nowhere near the same as airport security.
I see airport style as anything which requires me or my stuff to go through a machine. It's just not part of riding trains in a large part of the world and I think it's fair to bring it up! Lots of airport security is effectively just a baggage scan too.
I have *definitely* been held up by it for more than 2 minutes as well, and I think it's fair for me to voice that as an inconvenience.
Nobody is censoring that you mention it as an inconvenience if you feel it like that. It does exist, so it is fair to bring it up, you have all the right to do so, hey, it is your channel. But an accurate depiction of what is like should be given. Airport security is most definitely NOT just a baggage scan, it implies more than that, you are personally searched and all your belongings need to go through the scanner. Plus you need to arrive way before boarding. This is not what you have to do before boarding these trains, that is my point.
I think mostly peoples only regular experience needing to go through an organized security process is at an airport, thus why I bring it up. I think the main difference is between being able to walk right in and to your trains and having to go through any kind of screening process.
Like Germany's system the most, not the fastest in absolute terms, but the best trains imo and does manage to connect a lot of cities, which are much closer together/denser than other countries so does what its designed to do.
Plus it's pretty affordable, especially compared to France
@@thomastschetchkovic5726 it is? wow i always thought it was pretty expensive if you can't get early booking discounts etc. which then it is really good. like 50€ -70€ from Hannover to Munich is really affordable. but the regular price is more like 130-150€
The thing about DB prices is: if you book in advance, prices will be pretty low already and if you travel just 2 or 3 times a month you can get discounts with the BahnCard. And if you travel super frequently you can get a monthly subscription that works for every train in all of Germany and I think even first class. But that's super expensive obviously and only reasonable for really frequent users of the network
Germany does some unique things for sure, and I still think Berlin HBF is my favorite station in the world
@@RMTransit Berlin Hbf is quite impressive, but the slow & undersized elevators really suck.
Regarding the use of powercars instead of distributed motors in France: Locomotive hauled trains (which powercars are this for this purpose) excell the best with limited decelerations like few stops (this is something you mentioned in your American HSR explainer, for that matter) but there is another advantage for using them instead of multiple units: They aren't restricted by the train's floor height. Low-floor trains (which most bi-level trains are), though great for level boarding with low platforms, don't leave much space for engine stuff and more powerful engines require more space. Only few EMUs like the Stadler SMILE manage to drive at high-speed operation while the rest are high-floor.
Notice that although there is a single level AGV (EMU version of the TGV, most notably used by Italo), there are no bi-level AGV for this reason, you can only order one with power cars only. And with SNCF's decision to use bi-level trains for the HSR network, the TGV is bound to powercar trains.
Using power cars was also the only way to reduce weight enough to meet the strict axle loading regulations of France's high speed track while using double decker trains. In addition with a non emu you can make the platform shorter to not have to account for the length of the power cars. Ultimately the TGVs have the highest capacity of any high speed train, while still being on Jacobs bogies and thus very comfortable and safe.
@@user-kw9qu2gz8v I wouldn't say it's the "only" way. JR East operated E1 & E4 MAX dual-decker EMUs for several decades (the 100 and 200 series also had a couple of double decker EMUs in their sets, but those were for green cars). Nor is the 17t axel loading limit an issue. The original Shinkansen was built to that spec, and they've only gotten lighter since (13t on E5s, and 11t on N700A/S series). Likewise having ridden a CR400A (Beijing to Shanghai) at 350 kmph and a TGV Duplex at 320 kmph-both with a 17t axel load limit, I can say there's no perceivable difference in smoothness between the two despite the latter running on Jacobs bogies. Likewise there has been a fatal derailment on the TGV, none of the 3 derailments in the Shinkansen (2 due to earthquakes and one a blizzard) have led to any fatalities. So I find the common claim of Jacobs bogies being safer and smoother being largely theory and not in practice (at least when it comes to high speed rail).
As for highest capacity, I don't think the TGV is even close. The EuroDuplex sets can get up to 550'ish seats, with the 8 car being densest at 92 passengers. In fact the largest TGV derivative sets are in South Korea which operate larger 20 car sets and can carry around 930-960 passengers. Whereas on the Tokaido Shinkansen, 16-car 1300'ish passenger sets have been the norm since the 0-series first started operating (with highest density single decks being 100 passengers). Likewise for density, the E1 and E4 series double deckers had carriage capacities of 124 passengers in the densest carriage.
Each TGV Duplex can carry up to 634 passengers in the densest configuration (2+2 seats in every car) and TGV are frequently running coupled, that means up to 1268 passengers per train. That's not bad considering that the loading gauge of French rail network is considerably smaller that Shinkansen network.
And Shinkansen trains have a 3+2 seating configuration in ordinary cars, few people like having the middle seat. Legroom is way better in Shinkansen trains though.
@@archie4oz Aside what the previous commentor mentioned, I also have to note that while the E1 and E4 MAX are bilevel, they only had a max speed of 240 km/h which is not true high speed (that starts at 250 km/h).
A comment on HSRs in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang here. HSRs to those provinces serves as a diversion of passenger services off major freight corridors. Inner Mongolia is a major producer of coal, so the regular railway lines are saturated with trains moving coal out from that province. The trunk railway line in Xinjiang is part of the BRI Sino-European freight route, which is saturated with container traffic. This diversion means both the passengers and the goods get better and more frequent services.
Worth pointing out that the reason you have to go through airport-style security to get on high speed trains in Spain is that a 9/11-style event occurred in Madrid on March 11th, 2004 involving.... you guessed it: trains!
Every other country: our network should be higher on the list!
Germans: our network isn’t rated low enough!
Jokes aside it would be a good idea to detangle the regional and intercity network even with new highspeed corridors of disruptions occur on legacy tracks into a station the delays can spread through what feels like half of the entire country… Aside from the tracks having been bottle necks for like 20 years into cologne for example and work on cologne deutz to add 2 more highspeed platforms to bypass at capacity cologne central doesn’t seem to move along at all
We love the Train to Busan references 😊
In my opinion Germany had to ranked higher because the quality of the trains is great with a restaurant, good seats and high speed lines all over the country. And the international lines aren‘t that bad. Usually every hour starts a train to every neighbour country😉 But the delays… But in general it‘s a good video!
I would agree. The complexity of the network within Germany is outstanding.
And yes. Due to cost cuts 20 years ago the infrastructure of today does not provide enough capacity for all the services Deutsche Bahn has to ensure. So it's going to be a process of like 10 or 20 years to fix all the weak points.
Yeah, you might only be doing short 5-10 min bursts of high speed as you jump in and out of LZB corridors and they're literally always late as is normal for DB but you do have a very nice and luxurious train to ride in.
The german hsr trains are the nicest ive ever been in, unfortunately they can often be pretty slow compared to the international competition. For an experience of how incredible they could be ride the ICE 3neo from Frankfurt to Paris, the moment it hits the LGV its an incredible ride, much smoother and consistent than TGV + great food
Makes me think of my country Australia. A proposal for HSR linking Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne is decades old and keeps being put off.
Oh wow Morocco, impressive. Outperformed the US, Russia, India. Maybe spend more money on trains rather than nukes for a moment, that would be a good idea probably...
Also, it would be great if you do a video on Africa
India doesn't have true HSR at the moment, but thats going to change~!
Interesting insights, as always!
However I definitely wouldn't rank Spain as highly as Japan. I only have limited experience of the Spanish system, but the whole experience of using the trains (the scheduling, the location of stations, the quality of station buildings themselves, the ticket buying experience, having to go through security, etc) all seemed quite poor to me compared to the Shinkansen in Japan.
I'm Italian, I agree with your top 10! Certainly in Europe Spain has the best high speed network.
Just a clarification: in Spain they also use Italian trains, in fact the Iryo company uses "Frecciarossa 1000".
Is Hitachi Italian?
@@axwleurope9519 is Trenitalia italian...
Cool video! I kinda disagree about HSR to Inner Mongolia being excessive, apparently the region has 24 million people and it's not that far from Beijing so it doesn't seem like a long shot. Certainly overbuilding is better than underbuilding (looking at you US and Canada)
@@jaspertalwani4039 the biggest problem with overbuilding is that maintenance is still a thing so if it doesnt bring in enough profit its just useless and costly
I wouldn't call Spain's security system 'airport style', unless you are referring to airport security from the 90's. I found it to be pretty straightforward. Toss your bag onto a conveyor and walk through a metal detector. Took about 2 minutes.
sounds like an airport to me
@@cooltwittertag Not sure where you live. In the US you have to also take everything out of your pockets, separate out liquids and laptops from your luggage, take off your shoes, etc. None of that for the train.
@@gregford5971 seperating liquids is what someone does when packing anyways and other than that just having an open suitcase usually does the trick for EU flights
Couple notes: Taiwan's trains do 300km/h, not 350km/h; Siemens is pronounced Zeemens (pretty common Anglo mispronunciation); there is at least a fast train service from ICN to Seoul Station to catch a KTX (though a direct service would've still been nice, yes).
@@Urbanhandyman Siemens is not an English word; saying seamans instead of zeemans is just as much a mispronunciation as Porsch instead of Porsche
@@Urbanhandyman if it wasn’t a proper noun it wouldn’t be a big deal, but….Btw, it also bugs me when people say Shaenghai and not Shanghai, Darfur instead of Darfoor, etc. It’s about respecting others’ languages as a means of respecting their culture. Additionally, it’d be one thing if it was just in casual conversation, but this channel aims to make high-quality content on a specific subject matter; I’m sure Reece would rather be pronouncing things correctly if he’s not already.
Yes that was a slip of the tongue re Taiwan.
I'm pronouncing Siemens how people pronounce Siemens in English because I am an English speaker. People working at Siemens generally say Siemens to me the way I said Siemens in this video.
@@RMTransit I don't mean to nitpick, really; excellent video otherwise, as usual!
I rode quite a few of these systems. The latest one is the Shinkansen, as my mission team rode the Hayabusa 107 train from Tokyo to Sendai, where we are serving in. We left Sendai after two weeks of mission work on the Hayabusa 108 train.
Great video as always! I disagree on your comment on Inner Mongolia, it has 23 million people with the provincial capital (Hohhot) having 2.3 million. Considering that the amount of people is half the total of most of the countries on this list, I'd say it's a pretty valuable high speed connection. Not to mention it's pretty close to Beijing so it out competes flights which can only be a good thing.
The time stamps are all over the place. It’s also weird to say that Japan and Spain are tied for third instead of tied for second lol
Finally, the video I was wondering if you would ever make, providing credit to China for committing and innovating. What you should followup with is how China has integrated Urban Metro, High Speed Rail and electrification of Bus, Trolly & Taxis/DiDi. By the end of the decade it is likely the virtually all public transportation in China will be electrified.
The HS trains and metro connections in China is absolutely stunning
major cities around the world like Berlin have already announced to be fully electrified for all modes of public transport by 2030. What I am annoyed at is the lack of seperation between metro and commuter rail. Places like Shanghai have metro lines that are way too long and should be full frequent commuter lines instead.
Reece,
Can you make a video on top 10 upcoming hsr systems to know which nation has the best vision
Japan's HSR lines being rather lean makes sense, since over 90% of it is tunnel or overpass, both of which are time-consuming and costly to construct, not to mention making sure the overpasses are indomitable to earthquakes and the tunnels resistant to floods, mud-/rockslides, and avalanches. It may seem almost unfair looking at other countries that build much of their vast HSR network on level land.
The convenience of no airport style security for shinkansen is understated in this video, I think.
The impressive part is that they managed to build the world's first HSR network, in Japan, a country that is known for its rugged and mountainous terrain. A vast difference from the flatlands of central France or Germany. Or the absolutely endless flatlands of the midwestern US.
there's a very good reason why France doesn't do EMUs : duplex trains. You can't fit all the propulsion system in a bi-level carriage so the TGVs keep their locomotives and duplex carriages separated. This way the train carries way more people for a given lenght than an single-level EMU.
And shared bogies are safer
This ranking could be a bit controversial as it's mostely based on opinions and the perception of the product by a foreign viewer. To me, it's almost impossible to rank such different services based on all their features combined.
Each country decide to develop it's high speed network based on their need and constraints. For exemple:
- Spain needs is to connect it's territory to the rest of Europe so they decided not to build a 1668mm network but to adapt it to the western Europe standards. As a consequence, running on legacy lines is rare.
- France is a centralised contry so a big part of passengers needs is to connect provincial citys to Paris. So the network is designed for it.
- On the contrary, Germany is a fully decentralised country and no corridor really stand out of the crowd like the Paris Lyon Marseille one in France. So their strategy is to uprade one by one each corridor with high speed lines or higher speed on conventionnal lines.
To me, the only thing we can question is how the "high spped response" meets the needs of their territory. It's a very deeper question that maybe needs a 20 minute video for each country.
The most important corridor in Germany is along the Rhine! From the Netherlands to the Ruhr Valley, Cologne and the former capital Bonn over the middle Rhine valley which has two lines along each river's bank that are both at maximum capacity and another HSR line from Cologne to Frankfurt directly that is actually exclusively HSR. Then from Koblenz, the end of the middle Rhine valley, to Frankfurts Metropolitan area and also Darmstadt, Ludwigshafen, Mannheim... From there you travel along Freiburg, nearly hit Straßburg and finally finish at Basel. It's the densest and most industrial area in all of Europe, mostly located in Germany. And still the HSR network is lacking... Though there are upgrades on their way in the Ruhr valley (RRX Expansion If you want to look it up) and from Mannheim to Basel the line is also being expanded to 4 tracks and upgraded for 250km/h. But still, the linke Rheinstrecke from Cologne to Koblenz doesn't have ANY upgrade plans. And ETCS upgrades are progressing also quite slow to say the least
He has done lots of videos based on each individual HSR system. This video is his subjective opinion backed by objective observations about each.
Yep, it's just a RUclips video! But, I think with some well founded opinions and observations.
Great video as usuale, Reece! Congrats from Italy, where work is going on to finally complete that Milan - Venice hsr section, among others in southern Italy. I can't wait to see all of them completed; you will have to make another video about it when the work is over.
New line
Napoli Bari 2027
Milan genoa 2025/6
Brescia Verona padova 2026
Salerno reggio Calabria 2030/203...
Bologna rimini bari 2040
Messina bridge 2032
Italy has done incredible work with it's HSR system.
@@RMTransit 💪💪
It's true that Spain's high speed train boarding makes you go through security but this is understandable given the past terrorist attacks that took place in Madrid... (over 100 people died in a train terrorist attack by Al Qaeda in 2004).
Totally agree that it's hard to do a ranking, because they are so many factors. For instance: I really enjoy the punctuality in Japans Shinkansen network, but it is expensive and only covers major cities on a long straight with a few branches.
So yeah, the overall speed between Tokyo and Osaka is without any doubt higher than let's say between Berlin and Munich. But once you wanna travel between other cities, it's a totally different story. For example, the 224 km from Tsu (Mie) to Tottori, both prefectural capitals in Japan with 190-270k inhabitants each, takes a whole 4:30-5:15 hours by train (~50 km/h on average).
In the end, useful infrastructure should reflect the circumstances. Most of Japans major cities are lined up beautifully? Go for it and build that line! Germanys population is really spread out? Build a grid instead of a line. Even if it's a 160 to 200 km/h grid, instead of a 300 km/h line^^
So true about the NIMBYs in Germany 😅 And they are not just preventing rail infrastructure but also power lines and wind power plants.
and highway (or streets in general) networks?
@@dinohermann1887 Not that much. One of the largest protests were the ones against the A49 but these weren't NIMBYs. I guess most of the NIMBYs are SUV drivers who need a lot of roads 😅
UK does not really have a HS Network, just a line.
You can have a 15min ride on Acela where the speed exceeds 200km/h.
All the 125mph lines aren't nothing!
@@RMTransit The East Coast Mainline and Great Western Mainline will get 140mph running in the not to distance future.
Europe should really get some international high speed sleeper trains. There are a lot of routes with great potential.
I've been on the hsr in Italy, France and Japan. All are pretty good. Australian hsr is 150kmh and expensive.
Whilst the UK may lack High speed rail, the various 90/100/125mph lines do give the UK alot of faster trains, even on some more rural lines
Unfortunately most of them are diesel powered…
I'm going to spain in a couple weeks and riding many high speed trains i cant wait
The security check in Chinese HSR system normally adds 3-15 minutes extra depending on station sizes and passenger flows, which is not a big deal because obviously there are always enough staff and almost no strikes unlike many European airports, for example, London Heathrow lol.
But then you have to reach the entrannce of the platform 15 minutes before departure or you will be denied entry (at least my experience at Guangzhou-nan High Speed Rail Station). So that's a total of 30 minutes. You don't even need to consider this in either Italy's and Taiwan's HSR.
@@allentchang Dude the station in Chengdu is huge. Sure you might be able to get onto the tracks in time if you rush, but you might not even be able to settle down in time before the wheels start rolling. I think the 15 minute rule is reasonable since nobody wants late passengers causing a train delay.
At least you get one free switch for each ticket on China's HSR, so missing a train isn't too big of a deal on the busier routes.
@@allentchangyou are crazy I've been taking China's HSR many many times. I have arrived even 15 minutes to the station multiple times and have never missed a train. The doors open 15 minutes before the departure and close like 3-4 minutes just before departure
@@allentchang It’s not 15 minutes. Most gates close 5 minutes before departure. Please do your research.
A video about Stuttgart would be cool! Both because of the complete restructure of rail infrastructure going on right now and the weird u-bahn/tram hybrid :)
Having lived in both Japan and China, I will say that Japan has the better rail network in terms of user experience. However, despite Shinkansen being world famous, I think the true power of Japan's railway system lies in the rest of it. It is the super efficient and unbelievably extensive regular railways that made Japan's system the best in the world, not the HSR part. Also, I say Japan is the best purely based on user experience. I agree that, in an overall comparison, there are a lot more to it. I also don't think JR can do as good if you through the vast land of China to them, so overall I agree with the ranking in the video.
Italy - in the past there has been little appetite to expand HSR south of Salerno, because of insufficient demand. However now it looks like they are planning it.
the problem with southern Italy, the line from Salerno to Palermo is that is very expensive to build due to the morphology of the land, the bridge between Italy and Sicily is still not there. However the line between Bari and Napoli is under construction at the moment.
Last example: Brussels Roma distance in HST track: 1174 km. Best connection today: 12h40. At an average speed of 200 km/h, slower because of the Alps, without any stop it could be done in less than 6 hours!
7:00 It closed because literally no one was taking on that line. It's slow, the tracks ain't built for HSRs, there are already express & local trains connecting to Seoul station every 5 mins, there's no space for your luggage, and so on. The daily ridership was just 2.5K passengers in the entire line, which is lower than a daily ridership in a single KTX station serving a small city. It was simply like an Acela train but in Korea.
7:25 It's just because most major cities are in a single line, except for Gwangju which is at the West side of the country. They're planning a line called 'Dalbit Naeryuk HSR' which will connect Gwangju and Daegu, but it'll take a lot of time since it's a very expensive project. Non-HSR lines are still available across most of the country & There are many lines servicing outside of Seoul.
I'm so looking forward to the transit explained on Seoul Metropolitan Subway
As am I!
Whats also impressive about China's CRH is the speed. AFAIK its the only country where trains consistently go 350 kph. There are no tickets also, because you book with your ID. Your ID IS the ticket. Very reliable, you can even order food from the stations to be delivered at your next stop. The system is very China centric though, and it'll take some time to learn how it all works. The massive cookie cutter style stations are also quite impressive, I remember my Bluetooth buds started cutting out in I think Wuxi station, just due to the massive number of people using Bluetooth in the same space.
One thing about China other than what has been mentioned in the video, is that aside from airport security, is all tickets have assigned seats, which basically that booking in advance is needed and you’ll have to stick to your booking in many cases.
And the service frequency at smaller stations can be pretty bad because there is no fixed service pattern
yes... also communism BAD !
When the airlines start to cry about prices and competition from high speed rail, you know you hit the HSR nail on its head. The Beijing-Shanghai HSR route and its $80 economy class tickets basically set a price cap on the airlines and they cried to the regulators to allow them to set their economy class fares cheaper - now most Beijing-Shanghai air tickets are around $50 outside peak times. And that HSR line is already at maximum capacity the government is pushing for a second Beijing-Shanghai HSR line.
I think Japan's high speed rail is the best by experience and convenience
Don't forget safety. They have the safest HSR system in the world. There has been no deaths on their HSR lines since its creation!
as someone who's previously stayed in sk, there honestly isn't really a need for the ktx branch to icn given the plethora of options we have (arex express and local, airport buses, the bee maglev, kakaotaxi) most of which would you get you there without much hassle and is pretty affordable as compared to say taking a ktx (ignoring the taxis and taking into account ktx trains are general 1.5 to 2 times more expensive then their regional and intercity counterparts)
El Pato is in the house
It's glorious
Too bad Talgo lost the rights to the design of the front. The Talgo AVRIL G3 prototype looked great; the production AVRIL for Renfe looks as generic as they come.
As a german i wouldn't say NIMBYS and complex technical standards are the main reason for the high speed rail network not developing its full potential. The biggest problem is that Deutsche Bahn is heavily underfunded. The money needed for fixing those issues is estimated from 60 to even over 100 billion euros. And the german government/transport ministry has just announced couple of months ago that they will delay those necessary investments to 2070 (!), instead getting it done by 2030. Pretty embarrassing for Europe's leading economy. But i guess those things just happen if the minister of transport always appears to be a conservative or neoliberal car-centrist.
Native Korean here. Some pointers to the rail network of this country, perhaps incorrect in this vid:
1. The KTX to Gangneung, which passes through Pyeongchang and opened just in time before the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, is missing in the map. There are one or two minor lines also missing here and there, but let’s let that pass.
2. South Korea did start its high-speed tech from the French TGV, yes, and it was also quite late to EMUs. What should be corrected though, is that it’s already developed its own EMU - the KTX-EUM, aka the EMU-260. As implied in its name, it has a maximum operating speed of 260 km/h and commenced services in 2021.
3. The KTX line to ICN was ceased because it didn’t exactly offer that much of a speed advantage - yes, it was convenient for foreigners visiting directly to places with KTX connections other than Seoul, but for everyone else, it wasn’t that much an advantage. It used existing conventional rail lines to make the trip between ICN and Seoul, sharing part of its tracks with the Airport Express (AREX) which already links Seoul Station to ICN - so the speed isn’t that faster if you’re on a KTX. Not to mention the already-existing AREX that already makes the trip in a similar amount of time, yeah… it’s not so much an advantage.
Regardless, though, it is pleasant to see South Korea’s high speed network receiving such coverage outside the country - after all, it is quite an underappreciated network, and - this comes from the guy who took the Acela from DC to Boston - it’s a billion times better than anything the Acela is going to offer anytime soon.
Incheon doesn't connect to KTX because the people that are flying into Incheon simply aren't leaving Seoul when they arrive. Incheon services long-haul international flights mostly, and very few people who come from outside Asia are immediately heading to Daegu or Busan. Business travellers aren't, tourists aren't, it would mostly be Koreans returning from abroad.
"Q. The California High-Speed Rail Authority was established 23 years ago.
During that time China has built 16,000 miles of high-speed rail. We are still working on the first 119 miles. What are we doing wrong?"
(nytimes 2018-01-18)
26000 miles/china
Both Italy and Germany suffer from a similar problem - Geography. Places are either very mountainous. Thus building a high speed rail line comes at extremely high costs. Or they are so densely populated, that it's not easy to find a route for the high speed rail in the first place. And sometimes, they are both. So you get places like the Rhein-Ruhr region with 11 million inhabitants, but not a single high speed rail line across. The high speed ends at the outskirts, and then the train runs on lines projected and built in the 1850ies. No, not 1950ies. 1850ies, when lines were designed to have steam engines at 70 mph running on them.
The only mountains you can find in Germany are in the south-east
@@etbadaboum You are quite mistaken.
PS: Google "Göltzschtalbrücke" for some impressive mountain engineering in the center of Germany.
Italy in particular..... Alps and Appennines are hard and great mountains.....
I agree completely with all of those rankings! For me, what the Chinese HSR does which most of the others don't is convincing people to use it instead of flying
yeah... is easy to convince people not to fly when you have no option (for shorter distances) I think France will also ban flights under 500 km if there is a HSR alternative.
@@johnsmith-cw3wo It saves lots of time travelling with HSR, you waste at least two hours to clear security check etc at airport.
China has many large cities with large populations spread over a wide area, and the demand for long-distance transportation is therefore huge. However, airplanes are expensive to operate, and if skyscrapers are used, such as in urban areas in China, airports are often located in the suburbs, making access inconvenient. On the other hand, high-speed trains can have stations near the center of a city, the boarding process is easier than airplanes, and the number of flights and the number of people that can be carried on a single train is enormous. As a Japanese person, a 10-minute security check after a 2-hour journey seems inconvenient, but since China is so vast, boarding time is longer on average than Japan, with only 10 minutes out of 4 hours. If you think about it, it doesn't bother you. In any case, I have to say that China's introduction of high-speed rail was a move of God.
Airport style security on Spain high speed network is due to March 11th 2004 terror attacks (Madrid train bombings). I do recall how the whole world changed after September 11th 2001...
It wasan't like that. the true meaning of a customs is due to failed attack in france of a young man carrying weapons in his bag. as high speed trains will end as bad as planes if they descarrilate
I agree that the french network is way too Paris-centric. But the whole country is like that. There is STILL no project to connect the East to the West, whether it's Bordeaux to Marseille and Nice, or Bordeaux to Clermont Ferrand and Lyon. You will have to make do with crappy night trains, or simply take a cheap flight... The main reason for that situation is that the regions between those major cities don't have major hubs themselves. In the South, you could definitely have Toulouse, Montpellier etc... but in the center, there's Clermont and that's about it. Périgueux, Brive or Ussel are small to medium sized towns (less than 50 000 people) with no university, no real industrial, touristic or cultural hub. Now, that is WHY there is no fast line there, but that is NOT a good enough reason. In the case of high speed rail lines, "build it and they'll come" is very true. Bordeaux has seen insane growth since the line to Paris went from 3h to 2h due to its recent improvement. Real estate there has gone insane.
As much as I love the French high speed system, the services on the Interconexxion Est have not been as successful as the SNCF hoped and the line remains underused. Ouigo's business model was originally to skip the Paris terminals and sell cheap tickets out of CDG airport, Marne-la-Vallée/Disneyland, and Massy-Palaiseau, but it turns out this made them less competitive with airlines (especially with French monocentrism), so now their approach is to just run a few trains a day out of the Paris terminals at inconvenient times when paths are cheaper. If SNCF wants to truly solve the Paris-centrism problem of their network while still running profitable services, they should dig a cross-city tunnel (they probably need another tunnel from Gare du Nord to Châtelet-Les Halles anyway). That said, most of the problems with their high-speed business (as well as Spain for that matter) could be solved by them just running more trains on more legible schedules, with cheaper and more consistent fares. As for Italy, they're an example of what France and Spain should do, but they also need to run far more trains with stops at FCO and MXP airports and should dig city centre tunnels in Rome and Florence
In Florence they're currently digging the HS tunnel which, along with the new Firenze Belfiore HS station, will allow a quick 'bypass' through the city without changing direction at Firenze Santa Maria Novella station which is now mandatory if the train calls at Firenze (and anyway current city rail link is too slow).
While a HSR tunnel in Rome is not in the plans and honestly I do not think it will ever be, because tunnelling central Rome is a big issue, due to archeological reasons. As a matter of fact that's why building the central branch of metro line C is taking forever. Along with other Rome's peculiar political issues.
Anyway Tiburtina station was designed to bypass the city without calling at Termini, to speed up the trains which did not terminate at Rome. And that was quite the way it worked when Rome-Naples HS line opened. But just for few years. Then they decided all the trains (with few exceptions) had to call both at Tiburtina and Termini even if that means to have longer travel times on the whole route, because Termini is better served by local transport, regional and national trains and because Milan-Rome is the most used route, so they decided to make every routes pass tese two cities main stations to attract more passengers.
Hope in the future things will change.
Last but not least, Milan.
Milan is the 'center' of HS network and it is the main train hub in Italy.
Even if to by-pass Centrale is possible just calling at HS gate stations or even calling at Porta Garibaldi through bypass platforms, Milan's rail ring is too crowded (much so Garibaldi link tunnel). Increasing the capacity of Milan's rail system is essential to solve the problem.
That's why here a HS bypass tunnel was really taken into consideration. Unfortunately it wouldn't be cheap at all and it's not considered a priority, then I do not think they're gonna build it.
Not in following decades at least.
Besides all the common reasons, there is actually a very specific-to-China reason why Chinese HSR stations are far from city center in undeveloped area. The land values near the HSR station will increase, and since the land are owned by the government, they can earn a lot by selling the land. This can also be seen in the planning of Chinese subways where some lines in the suburbs will intentionally avoid developed area.
They are also well connected to metro lines!
I still think it’s better to have it closer to the city center
@@brandonk.4864 True but in most cases you can get to the stations in under 30 minutes so it’s not that big of a deal.
I don't want to be overly apologetic for Germany, but one factor which is also often overlooked is geography. Germany, unlike e.g. France, isn't very centralised. Therefore it is difficult to build high speed corridors. Also, Germany has some very annoying mountains for high speed rail. There are some high speed tracks where TGVs couldn't even drive on, because there are to steep for them.
TGV's have the same gradient capabilities as most other high-speed trains and can run on all high-speed tracks as they follow roughly the same specs.
I guess you're thinking of the Köln Frankfurt high-speed line, but it's within the capability range.
The South-West / Med line in France between Paris and Marseille has gradients slightly over 35 per mil and the Eastern line has some high gradients too and TGV's run perfectly fine on these lines.
And they also run on legacy lines with high gradients in the Alps, like the current line through the 19th century tunnel between France and Italy where freight trains have to double or triple their number of locomotives to be able to climb. TGV's run just fine as they are on this line.
If it's a high-speed line, it should have gradients of maybe slightly over 40 per mil at the maximum as per international specs.
I don't think any high-speed line in Germany exceeds that gradient and the international specs.
And again, the centralized or not debate only has an effect on the layout / shape : star shaped layout vs grid shaped layout.
A "parallel" model of continuous lines equipped with ample and full speed bypass tracks around cities and spurs to serve centers is entirely independent from the layout and can be applied on the grid layout that Germany's network follows just as much as it is on the star / radial layout of France and Spain.
No one would ever think of pushing for a star shaped / radial layout in Germany, it would be stupid !
When some politicians or enthusiasts mention France or Spain as an example for high-speed lines, they don't think of, or push for the same layout, but for the same model / type of long, uninterrupted ultra fast backbone lines equipped with large bypasses around all cities along the corridor.
A bit like the Köln Frankfurt line but super stretched, like starting at the Swiss border or near Freiburg im Breisgau, running *near* Manheim, Frankfurt, Köln, Düsseldorf, Krefeld, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund, Münster, Bielefeld, Hannover, Bremen and ending near Hamburg, bypassing every single city center in between.
It would allow all types of services alongside each others and to never be blocked or slowed by other services. And a bottleneck in a city center station would only delay trains that stop there and not all the other trains in the corridor.
Unlike on the current German network, when a bottleneck forms in a station due to saturation and delays the whole line.
A continuous, interconnected network is also much more reliable and resilient, both in terms of maintenance and availability as it almost completely separates types of traffic.
A grid layout and parallel model in Germany would roughly follow the current lines, with 3 main North-South uninterrupted corridors and 2 or 3 smaller East-West also uninterrupted "connectors" seamlessly interlinked to the vertical corridors.
That way, a non-stop München to Hamburg sprinter service could run the distance at full speed in 3 hours or less. While other services could be run with a wide range of different stops patterns. With crazy high frequencies up to a train every 3 minutes on the HSL, like on some of the French and Japanese high-speed lines at peak hours.
That would massively increase the capacity of the ICE network while freeing up tons of segments on the legacy network for regional rail and freight trains while also offering long distance travel times short enough to compete head-on with airlines and essentially replace all domestic flights and international ones to nearby countries. Also capturing a much higher share of the car driving public.
Because currently, the ICE network is cracking at the seams, riddled with delays caused by saturation and bottlenecks in city center stations, and long distance city pairs take far too long to capture the entire domestic air market.
The current, unconnected, high-speed stretches are limited by the legacy network and stations' saturation.
There's so much potential to humongously grow the capacity of both the high-speed and legacy networks, drastically reduce travel times and capture the largest share of the market by (mostly) separating the high-speed and legacy networks (and avoiding city centers).
Often, politicians opposed to any new high-speed developments in Germany tend to poison the debate by deviating the question towards the layout / shape when politicians that support a parallel model with a grid layout mention France or Spain as examples.
I remember reading an entire article about this political tactic in Germany of poisoning the debate and pushing on the German sensitivity against centralism to create a false narrative and amalgam between the parallel / bypass model and the centralized star shaped / radial layout, even though they are two completely different things.
A tactic used by politicians opposed to new high-speed lines, car industry lobbyists, etc. to discredit supporters and HSR supporting politicians and then end all discussions and potential projects.
If I recall correctly, it was mostly the Bavarian CSU and also the CDU that used that tactic the most.
It would be great if a clear and honest debate about new developments following the parallel / bypass model could take place in Germany without the interference of bad faith politicians and their deceitful tactics.
Just imagine how great an uninterrupted, grid like network of 320kph fast backbone lines would be in Germany. It would be a revolution, a good one.
As for the geography / geology, Spain has mountains and plateaus everywhere, the whole Southeastern quadrant of France is full of hills, mountain bases and complicated valleys. And the Northeastern part has a mid to low mountain range.
So, it should not be more complicated than the Köln Frankfurt line. At 320kph, the line can make a little detour to avoid the most complicated terrain spots without losing much time.
"Lost" time that the different bypass tracks going around cities make up for, several folds.
In the meantime France and Germany are further developing their networks with new lines that are a bit more transverse, transforming their layout towards a radial and grid hybrid one. Proof that a grid layout and parallel / bypass model are perfectly compatible.
as someone from Japan, I disagree with this and recon Japan should be 1st again. It passes every test with flying colours, but everyone has opinions! Thank you for creating such entertaining videos, cant wait for more!
My reaction to Reece-cency bias 5:07 😂 (FFS it's not the right frame) Great video though 👌 There's definitely a lot that other countries can learn from this group's successes & failures.
I think you underrate HSR of Taiwan. Among these HSR systems, the punctuality and safety are among the best, just like father, like son. The punctuality is even better than Japan, with just less than 10 seconds of average delay, even far ahead of that of Japan (26 sec)! Moreover, since its operation starting in 2007, there is NO single accident causing any injury to human. This is a huge achievement no one can excel except Japan! And the HSR line of Taiwan is one of the very few HSR lines that can make profit, even during COVID!
And as for the convinience, yes not few of the stations are located quite far away from downtown but as least stations of Taipei, New Taipei and Kaoksiong to a lesser extent are located in downtown areas. Even though the station of Taichung is located in the periphery of its urban area, it's situated at the transport hub of Taichung and even central Taiwan that can travel 10 mins to nearer Changhua City, far faster from the station of Changhua. And you can take a bus to the new downtown of Taichung just less than 20 min via the nearby expressway. And the design of Taichung Station is very great that the bus stops are just right downstair of the HSR station in the indoor area. That means you don't need worrying raining weather and you can have a very short walk (maybe 2 min or even less) to go to bus stations. In short, Taiwan HSR adopts very strict and high standard of Japan and EU combined so that the rolling stocks are of very high standard that the cost is quite high but also the quality is high in retern. Taiwan HSR should be worth earning much higher ranking, at least top 5!
I am going to Taiwan in 2 weeks and will travel from Kaohsiung to Taipei on HSR, let me check it out. Talking about punctuality, Chinese HSR always arrives & leaves on time to the seconds, you may want to check out.😅
TGV 🎉❤🇫🇷🚄
as a note on what you said about spain, its true they have an airport type control but it is really quick and easy, and even in the biggest stations like atocha in Madrid i have arrived less than 10 minutes before my train starts and made it easily if you know the station a bit
Shame Queensland's Tilt Train didn't get a mention. It's the only narrow gauge high speed rail network in the world, utalises both electric and diesel powered trains, and has a unique tilting design which allows it to reach speeds of 210km/h on narrow gauge tracks.
High speed is considerated over 250km/h
he's talking about the whole system, not the trains themselves
Rode Italy's Italo in 2014, and Spain's Ave last summer. Was surprised at how bumpy the Italian rails were compared to the Spanish. But they're both seriously cool
That's because the rail network in Spain is the most technically advanced in Europe. They have a special know how
Soon you will have Indonesia added to the list. It will be the first HSR line in south hemisphere
I read from the news saying it reached 347km per hour during the test run and it is ready to go. Not sure why Indonesia government still holds on to it.😅
You forgot one line in Korea that goes Seoul to Gangneung, It's not 300km/h but still, its 250km/h. That line was built for Olympic. (about a quater of buget alocated for Olympic was constructing this line) The sole reason why Inchean Airport KTX existed was Olympic.
Although, that line exceeded expected ridership after Olympic as Gannueng became new hot local tourist spot, since now its closer to see ocean compared to Busan from Seoul. It carried more people after Olympic the next year of Olympic.
5:25 Another problem. We don't have overtacking tracks I mean they are better than 4 track constellation, because you can built also high speed switches in it to let trains overtacke and we are not punctal/on time at all.
The Japanese actually experimented with gauge-change trains, but were hamstrung by the issue they were going between standard and narrow gauge, rather than broad to standard. The reduced amount of space to work with led to all sorts of issues arising with the bogies. They never got out of the testing phase. What we got instead are the 'Relay' limited express trains to fill gaps in the network when these have existed - mostly in Kyushu (such as the Relay Kamome). They could have kept working on the issues, but they probably figured in the end it was easier and cheaper overall to keep lobbying prefectural governments (*cough* Saga Prefecture *cough*) to sign up to a standard Shinkansen build. When JR West decided to go for a full Shinkansen build between Tsuruga and Osaka (and struck out the Kosei Line upgrade option), that was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for gauge-change trains in Japan, at least for now.
The UK doesn’t deserve to be on this list anymore. We f’ed it up
Why didn't you mention turkey?
Not as much service as many of the networks, and the connectivity is still lacking. I think given the expertise being built in the country it will probably be much better in 5-10 years. Probably surpassing a few western Euro systems.
5:03 that's one big problem, the ICEs often don't accelerate to their top speed because of the network and because it wouldn't make sense because there are too many stops in smaller cities.