Japan and South Korea outraced other countries with its high-speed trains, a survey says.
Comparing the performance of high-speed trains from 20 countries, travel planning platform GoEuro found Japan and South Korea as the countries with the best performing trains. Japan's high-speed trains, ranking first, performed at a record speed of 603 kilometers per hour (375 miles per hour), a maximum operating speed of 320 kilometers per hour (199 miles per hour) and population coverage of 36.55 percent.
Following Japan is South Korea with high-speed trains having 421 kph (262 mph) and 300 kph (186 mph) record and operating speeds, respectively. South Korea's trains have a higher population coverage of 44.67 percent.
Results showed that although high-speed trains originated in Europe from the 1980s to to the 1990s, Asian countries have sped up their transport technological advancements, leaving France and Germany at No. 4 and No. 7 in the ranking.
At present, Europe is developing some high-speed trains that are expected to be finished by 2026. France, for instance, has plans of reaching about 4,500 kilometers (2,796 miles) of dedicated high-speed tracks aimed at increasing the population coverage by at least 15.20 percent. Germany also plans to increase its transport network by at least 50 percent by building about 790 kilometers (491 miles) of high-speed tracks.
The United States ranks 19th among the 20 countries with a record speed of 265 kph (165 mph) and a maximum operating speed of 240 kph (149 mph). It is quite notable that only 3.73 percent of its population has access to high-speed trains.
Some are contesting the accuracy of the survey, while others say that the United States should not have been included in the survey at all. Steve Hanley of green technology website Gas2.org points out that only a small portion of its Northeast rail between Washington and Boston can reach speeds of 150 miles per hour or more, which is the requirement to be considered a high-speed rail.
Hanley also illustrates that those traveling by train in China can cover 819 miles in five hours, whereas those in the United States taking Amtrak to travel the same distance will have to wait more than 13 hours to arrive at their destination.
Could finance be the issue? Hanley notes that the countries ranking at the top of GoEuro's survey have a lower GDP per capita than the United States.
"So the problem in America isn’t lack of resources, it’s a lack of political will," Hanley says.
The Obama administration previously planned, several times, to build high-speed railways as part of the Recovery Act but a majority of critics fought against it and proposed a rehabilitation of existing, regular speed train networks.
United States and Russia, which were once the tough competitors during the Space Race, both ranked low in terms of coverage of high-speed network, with each serving not more than 1 percent of their total population.
An ambitious project by Hyperloop Transportation Technology (HTT) aims to create a high-speed train that, when completed, would transport about 10 million passengers at a speed of 160 miles per hour. Recently, HTT announced the construction of a Hyperloop prototype in California's Quay Valley.
"It is the closest thing to teletransportation," said HTT's chief operation officer Bibop Gresta. "We will crush every record on the ground ... It will completely change humanity."
When the project is finished, maybe United States can rank well in the GoEuro survey.
Photo: David Pursehouse | Flickr
