Europe's High Speed Trains by Mitchell P Strohl A study in geo-economics HC

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It is with great pleasure that I, both in my capacity as secretary general of the International Union of Railways and as chairman of the High Speed Task Force of the European Railways, have agreed to write the foreword to Mr. Strohl's book Europe's High Speed Trains: A Study in Geo-Economics. I firmly believe that high speed rail, along with combined transport in the freight sector and public rail transport in large conurbations, constitutes one of the major strategic thrusts, if not the main pillar, on which the future of the railways must be built, certainly in Europe but, in more general terms, over main corridors linking up large towns and wherever there is a high population density.

Mr. Strohl's perfectly documented book opens, and quite rightly so, with a description of the main geographical and economic data which characterize this European continent of ours. I am sure that this will be very useful for the book's cross-Atlantic readers, who share with the French the reputation of not knowing their geography, although such a sweeping statement is undoubtedly doing an injustice to the cultivated minority of the population. It is, indeed, vital to know thoroughly the fundamental factors that drive the conception of a high speed network:

the population and its spatial distribution

the geography of the landscape and the natural obstacles it harbors

the level of economic prosperity and its distribution between countries and regions

These three factors are crucial to any analysis of economic and social profitability, which plays, quite rightly, a key role in decision making for the design of the network and its "components."

The corresponding data must also be properly understood if the lessons learned in Europe are to be intelligently interpreted for the continent of North America. In this respect one should avoid making analogies too rapidly, for if one compares, for example, the United States with Europe, one finds that population density is much lower and much more evenly distributed than in Europe, the range of distances is much more extensive, the topography is in general less difficult, economic integration is clearly much more advanced, and behavior in terms of mobility is very different, as is also the attitude of travelers toward other modes of transport. All these differences clearly represent reasons for utmost caution in taking the European example as a role model for the North American continent.

Paradoxically yet quite correctly, this book, which is dedicated to Europe, begins by looking at Japan. Certainly the lessons to be learned from this country were extremely useful in Europe and will be, too, for North American readers. It was no coincidence that the high-speed saga began in Japan almost thirty years ago with the Shinkansen line between Tokyo and Osaka, since the conditions in this country were particularly suitable for the development of a high-speed transport system: in short, a high population density concentrated, furthermore, over a relatively small proportion of the country, combined with a strict limitation of available space for building new infrastructure. In addition, Japan's approach was characterized by the great caution which its engineers exercised in using only tried and tested technical solutions, thereby avoiding overambitious technological quantum leaps, which were one of the reasons underlying the failure of the British Advanced Passenger Train (APT). The approach taken by the European railways, and particularly France, was in this respect a little more daring than that of our Japanese friends but was based, nonetheless, on the same principle of caution vis-technology.

Mr. Strohl's book then moves on to discuss the various projects and developments currently underway in Europe. Rather than refer to these in detail I shall simply stress a few points.

France, which got off to an early start in its thinking on high speed rail-given that its initial technical and economic studies go back to the end of the 1960s-is now indisputably ahead of the field in terms of length of lines built, traffic volume achieved, and technology. The speed record set in May 1990 at more than 515 km/hr clearly showed the vast safety margin which exists in relation to the speeds attained in revenue service (300 km/hr); it showed, furthermore, that as far as speed alone is concerned, the rail technique could prove a worthy rival to the more futuristic techniques such as the Maglev. The choice between these techniques is therefore no longer in terms of target performance levels but in terms of simple economics. From this standpoint, it is clear that within Europe, the existence of a modern, meshed network of railway lines weighs heavily in favor of choosing a technique compatible with, say, the road-rail technique. The high speed network may be grafted onto an existing high-performance network, but one thing should be made clear: There is more to the high speed train concept than meets the eye; it is in fact a brand-new mode of transport, quite revolutionary, characterized by an overall system-based approach.

The options taken in Germany and Italy, although similar in some ways to the French approach, nonetheless rest on a quite different geographical and demographic environment. This is particularly true for Germany, where the federal political structure and multipolar demographic structure have led to quite different operating and technical philosophies, as compared with France, where the hub role held by Paris was a determining factor in the way in which the network, the system, and its mode of operating were designed. However, despite these differences, there are points on which these nationally developed philosophies converge. Germany and Italy, which at the outset were keen to design mixed traffic lines for passenger and freight, are now more and more turning to the idea of dedicated lines for passenger traffic on their new lines and are thus aligning themselves on the French model.

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