As the U.S. looks to improve passenger transportation, join us for a live Webinar where industry experts will share experiences, examine challenges and present various approaches of successful high-speed rail projects.

Panelists include:
•Rick Harnish, Executive Director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association
•Peter Gertler, Vice President of HNTB
•Chuck Pineda, Rail Division Manager – US for OHL
•Antonio Pérez, CEO of TALGO America
•Susana Mate, Assistant Director of Industry and Technology for the Trade Commission of Spain in Chicago

The panel will discuss the elements of a high-speed rail system, as well as the similarities and differences of projects in Spain, the U.S. and around the world; from how they are planned and engineered to how they are built and operated.

Hosted by the Trade Commission of Spain in Chicago, www.spaintechnology/rail.

Register at: www.masstransitmag.com/hi-speedrail

(Source: Tree Hugger)

Image Courtesy: Bombardier

Image Courtesy: Bombardier

Tree Hugger reports that the estimated $4 billion US (or 2.7 billion euros) is only part of China’s grand $300B dream. Another recent article on  TreeHugger outlined the grand plan to invest over $300 billion in high-speed rail through 2020, in a bid to speed ahead of the rest of the world’s train systems. Here are some excerpts from today’s interesting TreeHugger article.

The Chinese Ministry of Railways has announced that it will buy 80 “very high speed trains” from Bombardier’s Chinese joint ventre Bombardier Sifang to add to China’s fast-growing network of high-speed rail. The ZEFIRO 380 trains are both very efficient (more on that below) and very fast, and should help make transportation in China greener, especially if train trips displace plane trips.

The order is for 20 eight-car trainsets and 60 sixteen-car trainsets, for a total of 1,120 cars.

The ZEFIRO 380 has a maximum operating speed of 380 kilometers per hour (236 miles per hour) and is designed for efficiency:

The Bombardier press release notes ” The new trainsets will be an integral part of an evolving high speed rail capability in China, which is developing more than 6,000 km of new high speed lines to create one of the most advanced high speed rail networks in the world. The trains, with maximum operating speeds of 380 kph, are based on Bombardier’s next-generation ZEFIRO high speed rail technology, and powered by a highly energy efficientBOMBARDIER MITRAC propulsion and control system.

Image Courtesy: Bombardier

The ZEFIRO 380 trainsets will also incorporate Bombardier’s advanced ECO4 energy saving technologies to create best-in-class energy and operating efficiencies. Bombardier launched its ECO4 technology package in 2008 as part of an ongoing focus to extend rail’s position as the most sustainable form of transportation in the world. Bombardier is first in the industry to create a new formula for total train performance with a portfolio that can create substantial overall energy savings of up to 50%.”

The ZEFIRO 380 trains will be manufactured at Bombardier Sifang (Qingdao) Transportation production facilities in Qingdao, China. Engineering will take place in Qingdao and at Bombardier centers in Europe with project management and components provided from sites in Europe and China.

What the heck is USA doing?

If you are wondering what is the status of the US high-speed rail development program, here is your answer.  We are waaaaaaaay behind many of our counterparts that are already engaged in the HSR programs .  The Europeans (French with their TGVs  & Germans with their ICE trains) and the Japanese have been at the forefront of HSR for decades and have built excellent systems that are capable of traveling at ~250MPH speeds.  New comers such as Spain and China have blazed new paths and surged ahead of the US and have embarked on ambitious plans, backed by huge  government funding commitments.  Heck, even the oil-rich Saudi Arabia is forging ahead with its development of brand new HSR lines cutting across the sandy deserts connecting major cities.  Recently, the Russians also got on this track and have quickly sought Spain’s help in building their HSR lines.  While the rest of the world is surging ahead, the US Government is still wrangling over its plans of where to invest the $8Billion funding. The US HSR Association states “Our vision is for a 21^st century, 17,000 mile national high speed rail system built in 4 phases, for completion by 2030″.  Realistically speaking, this goal seems far fetched at this point, especially with the glacial pace of activity at the Federal level.

Click here to read the entire article. Also, click here to see more pictures of these new toys China is buying from Bombardier.

(Source:  The Transport Politic)

It would be nice to imagine effective mass transit connections at high-speed terminals, but they are not necessary to build ridership. Rather, we should focus on concentrating high-intensity development in station-area zones.

As the debate over spending on high-speed rail evolves into a full-fledged argument, opponents have focused in on the matter of connectivity to dispute the notion that U.S. railways would attract enough riders. American cities suffer from inadequate transit, and the thinking goes that people would as a result continue to choose auto and air travel even if high-speed trains provided excellent intercity service. The conclusion of this line of reasoning is that the government should invest in urban transit before it moves on to high-speed rail, though it should be noted that many of the same people fighting rail on these grounds have previously stated their opposition to spending on public transportation.

I discussed the basic fallacy in this argument last week — namely, that intercity and urban travel markets are different and that we have a responsibility to invest in both; we cannot simply abandon efforts to improve the ability of people to move between cities. But the point raised by rail opponents deserves to be adequately addressed. Will rail find riders even if no transit is available in the environs of stations? Should we invest in a travel mode that has been successful in densely developed regions in Europe or Asia when the U.S. is so sprawled out?

National Public Radio broadcast a sob story from a woman who traveled on Amtrak from Greensboro to Raleigh, North Carolina, only to find what she claimed was “no” bus service at the arrival station, requiring her to walk “along broken pavement on a street without a sidewalk” and then wait 15 minutes for public transportation. She stated that this process was so difficult that she would probably drive the next time she took the trip because of the difficulty of the end of the commute. The story’s conclusion was that the woman’s situation exemplified the state of transit in many cities and that future rail ridership might be hampered by these problems.

Leave behind for a moment the fact that the bus she took stopped literally one block away from the station, that it runs every 10 to 15 minutes throughout the day, that is it free, and that it serves Downtown Raleigh’s major museums the poor lady was hoping to visit with her nephew. The bus would qualify as good transit service in most American cities, so the woman’s experience may be more a reflection of the city’s bad signage and her limited experience in riding the bus than some systematic problem in transit provision.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Fortune Magazine via CNN Money)

Images via Apture

When lunch break comes at the construction site between Shanghai and Suzhou in eastern China, Xi Tong-li and his fellow laborers bolt for some nearby trees and the merciful slivers of shade they provide.

Image Courtesy:Fortune

It’s 95 degrees and humid — a typically oppressive summer day in southeastern China — but it’s not just mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the midday sun.

Xi is among a vast army of workers in China — according to Beijing’s Railroad Ministry, 110,000 were laboring on a single line, the Beijing-Shanghai route, at the beginning of 2009 — who are building one of the largest infrastructure projects in history: a nationwide high-speed passenger rail network that, once completed, will be the largest, fastest, and most technologically sophisticated in the world.

Creating a rail system in a country of 1.3 billion people guarantees that the scale will be gargantuan. Almost 16,000 miles of new track will have been laid when the build-out is done in 2020. China will consume about 117 million tons of concrete just to construct the buttresses on which the tracks will be carried. The total amount of rolled steel on the Beijing-to-Shanghai line alone would be enough to construct 120 copies of the “Bird’s Nest” — the iconic Olympic stadium in Beijing.

The top speed on trains that will run from Beijing to Shanghai will approach 220 miles an hour. Last year passengers in China made 1.4 billion rail journeys, and Chinese railroad officials expect that in a nation whose major cities are already choked with traffic, the figure could easily double over the next decade.

Construction on the vast multibillion-dollar project commenced in 2005 and will run through 2020. This year China will invest $50 billion in its new high-speed passenger rail system, more than double the amount spent in 2008. By the time the project is completed, Beijing will have pumped $300 billion into it.

This effort is of more than passing historical interest. It can be seen properly as part and parcel of China’s economic rise as a developing nation modernizing at warp speed, catching up with the rich world and in some instances — like high-speed rail — leapfrogging it entirely.

Last November, as the developed world imploded — taking China’s massive export growth and the jobs it had created with it — Beijing announced a two-year, $585 billion stimulus package — about 13% of 2008 GDP.

Infrastructure spending was at its core. Beijing would pour even more money into bridges, ports, and railways in the hope that it could stimulate growth and — critically — absorb the excess labor that exporters, particularly in the Pearl River Delta, were shedding as their foreign sales shrank more than 20%.

At a moment when the developed world — the U.S., Europe, and Japan — is still stuck in the deepest recession since the early 1980s, China’s rebound is startling. And the news comes just as Washington is embroiled in its own debate about whether the U.S. requires — and can afford — another round of stimulus, since the first one, earlier this year, has thus far done little to halt the downturn. Tax cuts made up about one-third of the $787 billion package, and only $60 billion of the remaining $500 billion has been spent so far.

Proponents of more stimulus are likely to cite China’s example of what a properly designed stimulus program can accomplish. Maybe so. But a closer look at China’s high-speed rail program also reveals some risks that should factor into the “Why can’t we do that?” debate that’s surely coming in Washington.

Last year China Railway Construction Co., the nation’s largest railroad builder, hired 14,000 new university graduates — civil and electrical engineers mostly — from the class of 2008. This year, says Liang Yi, the vice CEO of the CRCC subsidiary working on the Beijing-to-Shanghai high-speed line, the company may hire up to 20,000 new university grads to cope with the company’s intensifying workload. But with the private sector cutting way back on hiring — and university students desperate for work — taking on that many new engineers and managers hasn’t been too difficult.

Consider that the Northeast Corridor, between Boston and Washington, D.C., is served by Amtrak’s Acela train, which clips along at a stately average speed of 79 miles an hour. There’s a lot of talk now, as part of President Obama’s stimulus plan, about upgrading the system and building new, faster lines all across the nation. In his stimulus bill Obama has allocated $8 billion over three years for high-speed rail, and 40 states are now bidding for the funds, with results to be released in September. Among the possibilities, California wants to link San Francisco with L.A. via a high-speed link. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants the private sector to get into the act, proposing a high-speed spur to connect Las Vegas with L.A.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Fortune)

President Obama may call a nationwide high-speed passenger rail network a priority, but it’s going to take a lot more than $8 billion to make it happen.

Though Thomas the Tank Engine earned a loyal following of American children in the 1980s and 1990s through his popular PBS television show, real trains have long been out of favor with the American public. Even Thomas was a British import.

Indeed, the fact that an early 20th-century steam locomotive — and not a sleek, high-speed model — so captured the modern young American imagination is an apt commentary on the state of train travel in the United States: The country lags years behind some of its peers.

America has 457 miles of high-speed track from Boston to Washington, D.C. In Japan, by comparison, trains netting speeds up to 188 miles-per-hour cross 1,360 miles of track; France features 1,180 miles of rail to support trains that can travel up to 199 miles-per-hour; and, as Bill Powell’s article, “China’s Amazing New Bullet Train,” shows in the latest issue of Fortune, China aspires to dart even farther ahead with its $300 billion high-speed rail project.

But President Barack Obama hopes to bridge this gap, emphasizing the importance of developing a nationwide high-speed rail network in several of his speeches. Just a month into his tenure, the President successfully urged Congress to dedicate $8 billion of February’s stimulus funds towards the system’s development.

“What we need … is a smart transportation system equal to the needs of the 21st century,” Obama said in a speech in April, the same month the Federal Railroad Administration released its prospectus for the high-speed program, “Vision for High-Speed Rail in America.” “[We need] a system that reduces travel times and increases mobility, a system that reduces congestion and boosts productivity, a system that reduces destructive emissions and creates jobs,” Obama continued in phraseology typical of his rhetoric. But it remains to be seen whether the U.S. government can translate “talk” into “walk” when it comes to high-speed rail.

Last month, 40 states — both individually and in groups — submitted 278 pre-applications for various stimulus-funded high-speed passenger rail projects, amounting to $102.5 billion in requests. Final applications are due August 24, and the FRA will begin distributing funds in September.

Click here to read the entire article. (Hat tip: WTSLosangeles@Twitter)

(Source: Streetsblog)

The federal DOT has just released its guidance for states seeking a share of its $8 billion in high-speed rail funding — and tucked in the rules are standards that could prove crucial to the project’s success.

The definition of high-speed rail can vary depending on the source. The original White House outline cited a top speed of 150 mph, while European and Asian networks can go as high as 200 mph.  Today’s DOT guidance uses the same standard that was outlined in last year’s Amtrak reauthorization bill: high-speed trains are those “reasonably expected to reach speeds of at least 110 mph.”

That standard appears flexible enough to include most regional rail plans. California’s high-speed authority believes the state’s service can reach a top speed of 220pm. The states working on a midwestern rail network with Chicago at the center, however, envision their trains achieving an average of 67 mph for local service and 78 mph for express rides.

Secretary LaHood observed the following on his blog:

“And now, the time has finally come for the United States to get serious about building a national network of high-speed rail corridors we can all be proud of.  A robust 21st Century economy requires efficient transportation of people from urban center to urban center. And, the guidance we publish today will evaluate proposals for their ability to:

• Make trips quicker and more convenient;
• Reduce congestion on highways and at airports; and
• Meet other environmental, energy and safety goals.

So, today the guidance; in mid-September we’ll be back with the first round of grant awards. I am proud to say the DOT is meeting its ARRA commitments and meeting them responsibly.

High-speed rail can reduce traffic congestion on the roads and in the skies, and it links conveniently with light rail, subways and buses for competitive door-to-door travel times. It will encourage economic growth and create new domestic jobs even as it makes our communities more livable.

The guidelines require rigorous financial and environmental planning to make sure projects are worthy of investment and likely to be successful. Both planning and construction are eligible, so states can apply for funds no matter what stage of development their project is in. ”

Click here to read the entire Streetsblog post.

(Source:  The Infrastructurist & Asia Times)

The Chinese are at it again.  The Asian juggernaut is rolling ahead with its investment in beefing its modern infrastructure – this time with a massive investment in railways.   With the dedication and determination that has become a hallmark of all things Chinese, be it sports or the development, the country has proved time and again that it is among the best in the world.  Dithering and doing things half-way are not among the national character flaws that might be pinned on the Chinese.  And, perhaps, they’re already at it with this plan to build the world’s largest high-speed rail network. 

China’s rail links totaled 76,600km by end of 2006. But most of them were built at least 30 years ago and some even date back to the early 20th century.   The economic boom of the past two decades has generated soaring demand for rail transportation. In 2006, China’s rail network handled 25% of the world’s cargo and passenger travel, although the country’s railway network only accounts for 6% of the world’s total by mileage. 

In 2006, China’s railway network carried 662.2 billion passenger-kilometers – 2.7 times that of Japan – while it carried 2.87 billion tons of freight, a billion tons more than in the US, and 4.8 times that in India.  To cope with the skyrocketing demand for rail transport, the Chinese government has kept expanding its plans for rail construction. As of March 31, China has committed $259 billion to building its high-speed rail network project, and plans to spend nearly a half trillion dollars more in the next three years, boosting the total investment to $730 billion by 2012.

Of the Chinese investment, at least $1 billion is going to the German conglomerate Seimens for the purchase 100 high speed train sets. They will be, on average, 16 cars–or 1300 feet–in length, capable of carrying 1000 passengers, and capable of traveling 218 mph. Moreover, they will be running on tracks designed to accommodate that speed. Unlike, say, the Acela.  Ultimately, the Chinese government plans to buy 1000 high speed trains to run on a track network of around 25,000 miles. 

A little context here: The US–a country with a per capita GDP about 16 times that of China–has set rail as a national priority and has committed… $13 billion. Or, about 2 percent as much in China. This, of course, is in a place where it costs a hell of a lot more to get anything done.   In the U.S., President Obama’s decision to make high-speed passenger rail service a centerpiece of his transportation agenda is funded in part through the recently passed $787 billion stimulus plan including a total of $8 billion for improvements in the U.S. rail system. The Obama plan also proposes a separate five-year, $5 billion investment in high-speed rail as part of the administration’s suggested fiscal year 2010 budget (FY10 budget outline) to make a down payment on constructing enhanced rail network.

Source: Tree Hugger)

 Is Enthusiasm for High Speed Rail Just Another Speed Addiction?

The world is a confusing place – no sooner do the governments of the world finally start taking high speed rail seriously as an alternative to aviation, and the environmentalists start complaining. First we had Obama’s massive investment in high speed rail, which Jim Kunstler (who else?) described as “perfectly f***ing stupid.”And now UK politicians are limbering up to support a significant upgrade of the country’s rail system – but John Whitelegg over at The Guardian says High Speed Rail is an expensive and counterproductive red herring:

(Source: The Transport Politic)

Proposal reveals a little – and a lot – about how the administration wants to proceed with its rail programs

Click here to read the entire article.

 (Source: USDOT, Infrastructurist; YouTube)

President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Biden and Secretary LaHood, announced a new U.S. push today to transform travel in America, creating high-speed rail lines from city to city, reducing dependence on cars and planes and spurring economic development.

The President released a strategic plan outlining his vision for high speed rail in America. The plan identifies $8 billion provided in the ARRA and $1 billion a year for five years requested in the federal budget as a down payment to jump-start a potential world-class passenger rail system and sets the direction of transportation policy for the future. The strategic plan will be followed by detailed guidance for state and local applicants. By late summer, the Federal Railroad Administration will begin awarding the first round of grants.

The Infrastructurist summaries this nicely: ” In fact, he (President Obama) doesn’t pull any punches in saying that rail is a *better* way to travel than car or plane. It’s “faster, easier, and cheaper than building more freeways.” And he conjures the appeal of travel from city center to city center without having to dash out to far-flung airports — “no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes.” And: “High-speed rail is long-overdue, and this plan lets American travelers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways.”

The report formalizes the identification of ten high-speed rail corridors as potential recipients of federal funding. Those lines are: California, Pacific Northwest, South Central, Gulf Coast, Chicago Hub Network, Florida, Southeast, Keystone, Empire and Northern New England. Also, opportunities exist for the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston to compete for funds to improve the nation’s only existing high-speed rail service.

President Obama’s vision for high-speed rail mirrors that of President Eisenhower, the father of the Interstate highway system, which revolutionized the way Americans traveled. Now, high-speed rail has the potential to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, lower harmful carbon emissions, foster new economic development and give travelers more choices when it comes to moving around the country.

“My high-speed rail proposal will lead to innovations that change the way we travel in America. We must start developing clean, energy-efficient transportation that will define our regions for centuries to come,” said President Obama. “A major new high-speed rail line will generate many thousands of construction jobs over several years, as well as permanent jobs for rail employees and increased economic activity in the destinations these trains serve. High-speed rail is long-overdue, and this plan lets American travelers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways.”

“Today, we see clearly how Recovery Act funds and the Department of Transportation are building the platform for a brighter economic future – they’re creating jobs and making life better for communities everywhere,” said Vice President Biden. “Everyone knows railways are the best way to connect communities to each other, and as a daily rail commuter for over 35 years, this announcement is near and dear to my heart. Investing in a high-speed rail system will lower our dependence on foreign oil and the bill for a tank of gas; loosen the congestion suffocating our highways and skyways; and significantly reduce the damage we do to our planet.”

Ten major corridors are being identified for potential high-speed rail projects: