Talk:Higher-speed rail

Continental bias
What of existing operations or projects in Asia or Europe? In Germany and Italy there are several lines that are too slow for categorization as high-speed, but are certainly of the speeds referenced in this article.Dogru144 (talk) 18:50, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * First of all, not a partucular range of speeds that defines the category of higher-speed rail. Each country has its own way to define it and even that it is not unified within each country. You can see the definitions in the US and Canada have differences including speed ranges. Now, whether Germany and Italy have any specific definitions of "higher-speed rail" is another story. From my understanding is that in Europe, they just don't use this term to separate inter-city trains into these categories. They just simply call them all inter-city trains for all the lines that don't reach the high-speed rail status. I think the difference is that in Europe, they are constantly improving the quality of the train services and the speeds are increased on regular basis. In Asia, they don't bother with increasing speeds of existing lines, but they focus more in building new lines as HSR. In Japan, they build out the "mini" with lower speeds than typical HSR, but the UIC defines those as HSR, so they can't be called higher-speed rail. However, in the US and Canada where the rail is not as up kept as in other places, and they don't have resources or political will to built out the HSR. Then they turn the focus on HrSR. Passenger lines in these countries are heavily shares with freight trains, plus many safety regulations that make it hard to continuously increasing speeds unlike in Europe. So, increasing speeds is a big deal for these countries, and they make a special category for that. I have tried to find sources that would have any references to higher-speed rail in other continents but there is not many.
 * That being said, Ireland is included in the article because they specifically use the term. If you can find other reliable sources that use this term for those lines in Germany and Italy that you mentioned, you should then add those to the article. Z22 (talk) 07:35, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I would say that the German Intercity with a maximum of 200 km/h (125 mph) is the higher-speed network while the Intercity-Express (max. 320km/h, 200 mph) is the high-speed variant. When I look at it, maybe all Intercity-trains in Europe are HrSR. Most have a noted top speed between 100 and 125 mph, 160 to 200 km/h. The term seems to be very new and since Europe mostly made this development in the 1980 and earlier, it is unlikely to spread. Nevertheless it could be reasonably applied to many current trains. The alternative would be to say that HrSr is just a term for the improvement of lines to a standard comparable to 1980ies standards of the rest of the world. BTW, there are way more safety regulations that make HSR complicated and expensive in Europe, just look at all the predecessors of the European Train Control System. Especially Germany has also the problem with the freight trains that run on the same network, so no excuses for the US, sorry. --Beliar (talk) 20:33, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Great info that you provided here. I wasn't trying to give any excuses or anything. I have no information as to why they don't use this term in Europe so I was just giving some of my guesses which could be wrong. My point is very simple. We should not based on original research. If specific countries in Europe beside Ireland really use this term or any other terms that are closely related and those came from reliable sources, then we can add that to the article. Z22 (talk) 05:18, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Basically, we should not just decide that because the speeds are this and that range in those countries, then we should also call them higher-speed rail too without any reliable sources to use the term. As much as we like to group thing that makes sense, we as Wikipedians should not decide to call or create categories of things by ourselves. We need to only rely on reliable sources. Z22 (talk) 19:47, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

The reason you haven't heard the term used in places like Germany is that despite its prominence on Wikipedia it's actually obscure American governmental jargon (and even then, not even political jargon), not a term in widespread use. Amtrak, for example, rarely if ever uses the term publicly, describing its recent wave of 110mph upgrades as High Speed Rail. I have NEVER seen the term in the mass media.

I'm inclined to think this page and the pages related to it need to be deleted as it's an extreme case of WP:UNDUE, that not only pushes a particular agenda, but does so across a network of interconnected wikipages. The content needs to be merged with High Speed Rail and portrayed, correctly, as a classification used by American government agencies to determine funding, not as a distinct classification of railway speed (where it wouldn't make any sense anyway - a line where trains can consistently travel at 110mph is going to result in faster travel times than, say, a line where trains can reach 160mph, but usually travel at 60 or below, such as the Acela Express route.) --98.254.202.225 (talk) 14:42, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The term is not just an 'obscure American governmental jargon' as you think. The term is notable and verifiable by many reliable secondary sources. It is used by government agencies, government officials, transportation planners, academias, rail industry, and the media in the US and Canada. It has very specific technical specification in term of speeds especially in Canada (160 - 240 km/h). In the US, it is more blurry in term of which speed range this would fall into, but still it has the range of "top speeds" (not about operating speeds) below the high-speed rail range. Other countries uses similar term like high-performance rail/train, but still need more info on the ranges of speeds they generally refer to. More reliable sources from other countries will be added to the article later and the structure to be changed to address the concern of the contents with specific details to North America at the moment.Z22 (talk) 02:22, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Additionally, thinking of the term Higher-Speed Rail as "a classification used by American government agencies to determine funding" is incorrect. In fact, it is the opposite. The terms used by the current US administration for the sole purpose of funding determination are "Emerging HSR" (top speeds of 90 - 110 mph) and "HSR" (top speeds > 110 mph) with two types of services, HSR-Region and HSR-Express. These terms were invented by USDOT in 2009 which are still not acceptable as HSR classification in the International Union of Railways standard (minimum top speeds on upgraded HSR lines should be 125 mph). The term Higher-Speed Rail has been used prior to 2009 by regional transportation planners to include as one of their alternatives (of mostly up to 110 mph) beside their high-speed rail alternatives. Z22 (talk) 03:34, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Since no one else had additional comments on this, I have changed the article to use the template that reflects the concerns that it may have continental bias. Z22 (talk) 05:35, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I have moved the references on who use the higher-speed rail term here so that any future challenges to the use of this term can be discussed here. This will relieve the article page from carrying all these references just to show it is commonly used among these groups:
 * * Government agencies: From Passengers to Captains of Europe's Baltic Sea Strategy, The Development of High Speed Rail in the United States: Issues and Recent Events, and Ms. Helena Borges (Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport) at the Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Committee
 * * Government officials: Masse steps up high-speed rail push40th Parliament, 2nd Session Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, and Letter to Minister of Transport from Windsor Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce
 * * Transportation planners: Tier I DEIS: Chapter 2 Alternatives Considered, Section 5 Rail Transportation|url=|work=Congestion Management Process (CMP), and Deliverable No. 12 – Review of Impacts of HSR on the Transportation System within the Corridor
 * * Academia: High-Speed Rail Buzz Overpowers Daily Chug Of Freight Trains, and Studies Track Components for Shared-Use Rail Lines
 * * Rail industry: High-Speed Rail (HSR) in the United States - Why Isn't There More?, and High-Speed Rivalry Picks Up Steam
 * * Media: The other reason Virginia didn’t seek rail money (WP Opinions), Trains Fill the Gaps in Airline Schedules, Going will be slow on high-speed rail upgrade between Chicago, St. Louis, and High-Speed Rail: Obama's High-Stakes Gamble
 * -- Z22 (talk) 03:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Globalize
To address the concern mentioned in the "Continental bias" section on this talk page, I added more contents for higher-speed rail in other parts of the world. The contents are still light but it already provides a framework to expand to cover the higher-speed rail information worldwide. There is only one section now that is still US-centric. I moved the Globalize template down from the article level to that section. The strategies for rail improvements in that section are applicable worldwide, but they just lack examples from countries other than the US. When I have time, I will try to find reliable sources to diversify the examples.

Also I added "Similar categories" section. If anyone knows of train categories in some countries that fit the higher-speed rail but they are not called as such, please help expanding that section with reliable sources. Z22 (talk) 20:20, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The strategies for rail improvements section now includes the examples from the other country with higher-speed rail, Australia. I have removed the Globalize warning from that section. Z22 (talk) 09:15, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?
Most of the line from Montreal to Toronto is good for 100 mph. Since Transport Canada considers that "higher speed rail" (a term I abhor, but whatever) then the Montreal-Toronto corridor needs to be listed. --plaws (talk) 16:34, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that in Canada, the conventional rail can go up to 160km/h. The expectation of higher-speed rail is to go beyond 160km/h to more than 200km/h. At least here is a description of conventional vs. higher-speed for Cananda. Let me know if you have additional references to conclude that the Montreal to Toronto should be categorized to be higher speed. Z22 (talk) 20:15, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

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The automatic conversions (mph/kmh) are wrong
160 km/h is 100 mph, not 99 mph. (160/8 = 20; 20 x 5 = 100). How do we change the automatic conversions to get the accurate values? 137.205.171.154 (talk) 14:58, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
 * A mile is exactly 1,609.344 metres by international agreement in 1959. So it won't be exactly 1.6 km. This makes 160 km to be around 99.419 miles. Z22 (talk) 13:40, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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HrSR in Australia
Various other trains in Australia exceed the mentioned definitions for HrSR. I am specifically referring to the Xplorer, Endeavour and the strangely-named New Generation Rollingstock, the latter of which is yet to be put in revenue service. I haven't done the research, but would expect others to exist. Should these be included? Thanks, trainsandtech (talk) 02:39, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Discussion about the Northeast Regional qualifying as high-speed or higher-speed
Hello fellow Wikipedians! Just thought I'd notify people of the discussion occurring about whether Amtrak's Northeast Regional qualifies as high-speed or higher-speed. Please feel free to chime in. –Daybeers (talk) 22:08, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Advantages to HSR
There was a new section called "Advantages to HSR" added entirely without any sources. Although the content looks interesting but I don't think it is a good idea just added this. I tried to find the source(s) for this on the net, but couldn't come up with a good one that have those details mentioned in the section. What should we do with this section? Z22 (talk) 15:33, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I removed the unsourced info after attempting to locate sources but unsuccessful. I keep this edit here in case someone can find sources for this. Z22 (talk) 02:40, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

UIC and TSI definitions of "higher"-speed rail?
UIC has classes of high-speed rail, but I haven't seen them define "higher"-speed rail explicitly. The last bullet point in the Definitions section should have the reference to higher-speed rail taken out if that cannot be supported by a reference. Z22 (talk) 17:49, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I removed the unsourced info. The edit is here in case someone can find the source that UIC defines the term (or a similar term). Z22 (talk) 02:43, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

British InterCity
Aren't British InterCity trains basically this? I think they should be mentioned, at least. The main lines in Great Britain have a top speed of 125 mph. The WCML in the past had average speeds from London to Warrington of 104 mph (non-stop; this is slower now with COVID and with an extra stop at Crewe). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uncriticalsimon (talk • contribs) 22:02, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

The specific service mentioned has reverted to basically the old timetable, and so it is again timetabled at (for some services) 104 minutes for London to Warrington, which actually comes to an average of 105 mph. Uncriticalsimon (talk) 16:05, 10 October 2021 (UTC)