China has had the most dramatic high speed rail transformation, but plenty of European countries have developed solid systems without going “full dictatorship.”
Also, the USA used to skip over a lot of those legal hurdles when it came time to build a railroad (hence the phrase, “getting railroaded”) but for various reasons we’ve lost the political will to do this.
I wonder about that with the UK. We already have a rail network, it’s just old. Presumably we could upgrade it if we really wanted to without having to worry about securing the land, but there’s presumably just no will to do it.
I think part of the problem is that in order to achieve such high speeds, high speed rail lines have to be really, really straight, and as flat as possible. Older railroad right-of-ways are often too twisty, curvy, and hilly. So, sadly it’s not just an issue of new tracks & trainsets, in some cases there will need to be new routes.
At least, this has been an issue for Amtrak here in the USA. Their new Acela trains are pretty fast, but most of the line between Boston/NYC/DC was laid out in the 19th century. So it can only get up to its full speed on short sections of the track.
China has had the most dramatic high speed rail transformation, but plenty of European countries have developed solid systems without going “full dictatorship.”
Also, the USA used to skip over a lot of those legal hurdles when it came time to build a railroad (hence the phrase, “getting railroaded”) but for various reasons we’ve lost the political will to do this.
I wonder about that with the UK. We already have a rail network, it’s just old. Presumably we could upgrade it if we really wanted to without having to worry about securing the land, but there’s presumably just no will to do it.
I think part of the problem is that in order to achieve such high speeds, high speed rail lines have to be really, really straight, and as flat as possible. Older railroad right-of-ways are often too twisty, curvy, and hilly. So, sadly it’s not just an issue of new tracks & trainsets, in some cases there will need to be new routes.
At least, this has been an issue for Amtrak here in the USA. Their new Acela trains are pretty fast, but most of the line between Boston/NYC/DC was laid out in the 19th century. So it can only get up to its full speed on short sections of the track.