[Crilosajsamq]

New high-speed trains are remaking the map of Europe

Monday November 12, 3:24 pm ET

By Chris Redman, Fortune contributor

The sensation of speed is as muted as the Christian Lacroix interiors of the first-class carriages. Passengers stroll the corridors without lurching from side to side. Drinks at the bar are neither shaken nor stirred by the train's acceleration. Only the green rush of the Champagne countryside whooshing by at 200 mph vouches for the velocity of France's newest and fastest TGV, as it hurtles along the track from Paris to Strasbourg.

But despite the blur outside, it's easy to see why the opening of the TGV (for train à grande vitesse) Est Européen network this summer is a watershed event for high-speed rail in Europe. It's not because the new route adds some 200 miles to the continent's existing 3,100 miles of high-speed track, or because the world's fastest train service has slashed the journey from Paris to Strasbourg from four hours to a mere two hours and 20 minutes.

Nor is it that German trains are running on French track for the first time since World War II.
More important is the territory traversed by the new line. Fought over for centuries, eastern France is one of Europe's great crossroads - the equivalent of North America's Cumberland Gap, the passage through the Appalachian Mountains that enabled settlers to pour westward onto the Great Plains.

This strategic region had been sidelined as the TGV pushed out to more populous parts of France with greater economic potential. Now, what French rail boss Guillaume Pépy calls the "missing link" in France's TGV network joins Paris and the entire French rail system to a dozen destinations in Germany, Luxembourg, and Switzerland via Strasbourg and other eastern French cities.

"It's a key step in the evolution of European transport," says Pépy, 49, CEO of France's state-owned railway SNCF, chairman of the Eurostar consortium, and high-speed rail's most powerful advocate. "Just imagine getting to Prague as fast as to Marseilles. High-speed trains will change Europe's geography."

But budget airlines have been doing that for the past decade or more, rewriting the rules and economics of the travel business along the way. So what makes Pépy believe that rail can crash the party? The simple answer is that Europe's high-speed rail network is in the midst of what the French call a "beeg bong," a cosmic event that has gone largely unnoticed but which promises a new golden age of rail, with high-speed trains whisking ever-growing numbers across the continent.

Ten European countries already boast high-speed track, and if current projects are completed, there will be 4,700 miles by 2010 and 9,300 miles by 2020 - a tripling of today's network at a cost of about $200 billion. In addition to TGV Est, this year alone will see new lines opening in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain, where a 375-mile Madrid-Barcelona link will cut the journey on one of the world's busiest routes from about seven hours to less than three.

Even slow-coach Britain is doing its bit. Although plans for a high-speed north-south corridor have been shunted aside, the long-awaited link between London's new Eurostar terminal at St. Pancras Station and the Chunnel will open in November, cutting 15 minutes off the 2 1/2-hour trip to Paris.

Call it the TGV effect - and it's having a big impact on how Europeans are getting around their crowded continent. Since the TGV Mediterranean service started in 2001, cutting travel time from Paris to Marseilles to three hours, rail's share on the route has jumped from 22%, to 69% last year, forcing EasyJet to abandon its Paris-Marseilles flights altogether.

Even before the new TGV Est opened, Air France had reduced its flights to Strasbourg from 12 to eight and canceled all flights between Paris and Metz. Eurostar now has 69% of the London-Paris market and 64% of travelers to Brussels. With the Thalys service between Paris and Brussels taking only one hour and 22 minutes, there is only one direct flight left between the two cities.

"High-speed rail has gone from something special to something that's expected," says independent transport consultant Reg Harmon. "That means it's here to stay, especially given the supply outlook for hydrocarbons." Pépy, who turned the TGV into France's low-cost airline without its ever leaving the ground, makes the same point: "As air travel becomes more of a hassle, high-speed rail is winning 50% of the traffic where rail journeys are 4 1/2 hours or less."

Although launched in 1981, the TGV didn't really hit its stride until 1997, when Pépy, then head of passenger traffic, decided to beat the upstart budget airlines at their own game. Armed with a yield-management system borrowed from American Airlines and $400 million in price reductions, he embarked on a volume policy that transformed TGV's fortunes. Within a year passenger volume had increased by 12% and profits by 8%.

Last year TGVs carried 100 million passengers on 800 daily runs, with a load factor of 75%. Success for the TGV (it is now one of France's top ten brands, alongside L'Oréal and Chanel) has also meant success for its parent, SNCF. Although the latter's freight operations are still a black hole, with $366 million in losses last year, the passenger side is in good shape, thanks to the TGV's profitability.

"The TGV accounts for only a third of SNCF's revenue," says Pépy, "but its fatter margins are the main reason why we delivered a net profit last year of $845 million on revenue of $8.5 billion."

Disruptions to air travel caused by stepped-up security and airport congestion are not the only explanation for defections to rail that have forced budget airlines to slash ticket prices. A growing number of passengers see trains as a more eco-friendly way to travel. SNCF provides an EcoComparateur on its website that compares price, duration, and carbon emissions for a particular route.

Plug Paris-Marseilles into the EcoComparateur for a one-way journey starting between 7 A.M. and 10 A.M., and it shows that the TGV trip will cost $218, compared with $901 for an Air France flight (there are no budget airlines operating on that route). The flight duration of one hour and 25 minutes beats the TGV's three hours and 15 minutes, but not if time spent getting to the airport from downtown Paris, checking in, and passing through security is taken into account. The air passenger will also be responsible for 346 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, while the train traveler notches up only 22 pounds.

Still, it would be foolish to count the airlines out: European air travel is expected to double by 2020, according to Airports Council International, the airport operators trade group. And the Association of European Airlines says 160 million passengers took international flights within Europe last year, not counting charter and budget airlines, far more than the 15 million traveling across borders by train. (To put the trains-vs.-planes battle in perspective, it's worth noting that the automobile continues to command a majority of the European travel market.)

But the battle is set to become fiercer in January 2010, when airlines will have a chance to hit back on the rail operators' own turf, thanks to the EU-mandated opening of the international passenger train market. Like Europe's 1997 Open Skies policy, which introduced greater competition among carriers and made possible the rise of budget airlines, the new rail regime will enable carriers to run their own trains over European tracks.

Air France has already said it will operate trains, and others are expected to follow. Whether they will compete with existing rail operators or collaborate with them in joint ventures remains to be seen. But what's not in doubt is that if RyanAir can also become RyanRail, then Europe's railways face a major shakeout.

Across Europe budget constraints are forcing rail operators to seek productivity gains that could prove unpopular, particularly for SNCF's 220,000 employees, who wrote the manual on turning safety nets into hammocks. With privatization not an option, Pépy and his boss, SNCF president Anne-Marie Idrac, have their work cut out to make their trains run on time and more efficiently.

Germany's Deutsche Bahn is probably in better financial shape than others to survive the shakeout but will undergo a partial privatization next year that will force changes in the way it operates, notably its control of Germany's tracks.

As they work to put their own houses in order, Europe's train operators need to cooperate more if high-speed rail's potential is to be realized. Procurement habits, for example, need to change. Efforts so far by SNCF, Deutsche Bahn, and Italy's Trenitalia to agree to common specifications for a so-called HTE (High-speed Train for Europe) have failed miserably.

"Operators must define their needs and then step back and let the industry come up with a solution," says André Navarri, head of transportation at Bombardier, a Canadian train-car manufacturer. "The target now is lower procurement and operational costs, and for that we need to get away from over-specified trains."

Trains, particularly high-speed ones, need sophisticated, common signaling and control systems to prevent wrecks, but at the moment no fewer than 20 different systems are in use across Europe for both high-speed and conventional lines. The TGV Est network and its trains use the new common European signaling system, but the Thalys trains that serve Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne, and Paris have seven different control and signaling systems to enable them to operate in four countries.

Even if safety is not compromised, such complexity is a recipe for unreliability, which means competitiveness takes a hit too. Japan's Shinkansen bullet train may be slower than Europe's newest high-speed trains, but a unified operating system helps to make it six times more reliable than France's TGV.

The European Commission has been pushing for a common European Rail Traffic Management System to reduce bottlenecks and make trains more interoperable, but implementation has been slow. Retrofitting track and trains is expensive, and operators have dragged their feet.

Brought in by the Commission to speed things up, Belgian businessman Karel Vinck doesn't doubt the challenge he faces: "Getting a common rail-management system is essential. To do that you need to change the mentality of the people running the railways."

That's no easy task if the TGV Est service - a joint venture between SNCF and Deutsche Bahn dubbed Alleo - is anything to go by. French TGVs and German Inter City Express (ICE) trains are now operating high-speed services between Paris and Strasbourg and the German cities of Frankfurt and Stuttgart.

But setting up Alleo was a lesson in culture clash. Germans like to turn up at the station and buy a ticket to ride; SNCF insists that seats on the TGV be pre-booked as on a plane. Neither side would budge, so both systems are in place, although a few seats are kept aside for customers boarding in France who are not pre-booked.

That wasn't the end of it. The Germans insisted on stronger brakes for the TGV, on drinking-quality water in the lavatories, and real porcelain coffee cups rather than plastic ones in the dining car. The French had their own list of modifications, which added more than $10 million to the cost of each train set. Much of that went to solve problems ICE trains were having with flying ballast on the French tracks. But there was plenty of petty stuff too.

French trains have a special seat with metal rings to which anyone arrested on board can be handcuffed. Now ICE trains have them too. ICE inspectors serve coffee and meals to first-class passengers as well as punch their tickets. But this was beneath the French controlleurs, so now only the Germans do double duty on the jointly manned trains. Pépy insists that TGV Est was not delayed by the squabbling, but even if the trains are running on time and not years behind schedule, as some critics claim, high-speed rail can't count on an easy ride.

Environmental issues can also cause delays. "On one TGV line," Pépy recalls, "we had to spend millions to build special viaducts for migrating frogs." By the time the TGV Est was completed, environmental and other pressure groups had forced the addition of 24 extra bridges, tunnels, and viaducts. In Champagne the line was diverted to protect some vineyards.

Resulting budget overruns mean TGV Est will lose $140 million in its first year, despite being sold out for the first three months, and it probably won't break even for another five years. And if activists can cause headaches, so too can the laws of physics and economics. France is working on increasing operating speeds to 224 mph, but as Pépy and others concede, that will produce an increase in both noise and energy consumption.

Tunnels are a particular problem, as air compressed by a speeding train races ahead of the locomotive and can burst out of the tunnel with a sonic boom. And the faster trains go, the more vulnerable they are to crosswinds. International Railway Association high-speed director Iñaki Barron points out that the TGV's recent record-breaking run of 357 mph shows that much higher speeds can be attained safely, adding that the trend has been for yesterday's speed record to become today's operational speed.

But it's clear that safety, environmental, and other considerations, including the law of diminishing returns (i.e., incurring ever-higher costs for ever-diminishing savings in travel time), will come into play. "You have to look at all the factors," says Pépy. "Gaining five minutes on the Paris-Lyon run might not be worth it. But if you can bring the Paris-Bordeaux route down under two hours, you may well rob airlines of their market share."

Happily for train operators, high-speed rail travel is not just about speed. It's also about comfort, convenience, and, increasingly, changing consumer habits. French architect Le Corbusier once asked why trains couldn't be like high streets with meeting places, libraries, cafés, and shops. Today's trains may not have all these facilities, but they are becoming more customer-friendly, both for business and leisure travelers.

On many of the TGV's new duplex carriages passengers can choose to travel in "zen" or "zap" zones according to their mood (zen for the quiet life; zap for those more inclined to party). Conference areas are available for business travelers, and parents with children will be able to play tabletop games or rent DVDs. Passengers get to walk around, talk on their mobile phones, enjoy more legroom, and pay no excess baggage charges.

"Trains may take longer than planes on some routes," says Pépy, "but I like to think in terms of people gaining time on trains rather than spending it." He also sees evidence that train trips are becoming not just a means to an end but an end in themselves. "I want people to buy a train journey for the fun of it, as they would a DVD or a theater ticket."

Call it the curse of the wish come true, but with the launch of TGV Est, the SNCF found itself overwhelmed by demand for seats. Its own forecasts had shown traffic growing by a greater rate than could be explained by people switching from air to rail.

Was it just the low promotional fares, or were all those extra people aboard for the fun of it? Perhaps. After all, as Bombardier's Navarri explains, "Trains are very much part of Europe's DNA." If so, it's a good omen for rail's future and a vindication of the old Taoist saying that "the journey is the reward" - especially if it's at high speed.

[mdUzAMbG]

John Lichfield: Shunted off in a tale of two railways
While British trains are a byword for chaos, vision and flair are the French way

Published: 05 January 2008

While we curse our railways, the French celebrate them. And expand them. The Grand Palais, the enormous exhibition hall just off the Champs-Elysées, has been turned into a virtual railway station until next week, housing rolling stock and artistic displays to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the SNCF, the French state railway system.

To mark the occasion, Guillaume Pépy, the dynamic deputy head of the SNCF, and head of Eurostar, invited a few Paris-based European journalists to lunch. For someone such as myself, who is not afraid to admit that he was once a trainspotter and remains a great enthusiast for railways, the exhibition – L'Art entre en gare – was a delight.

So were M. Pépy's bubbling enthusiasm and vision for railways as a transport system, not of the past, but of the future. His vision is all the more exciting – or depressing if you prefer – against the background of the latest tangle of rail-engineering delays and line closures in Britain.

Not all recent developments on Britain's railways have been bad but we no longer, it seems, have anyone capable of making strategic decisions, or inspired guesses, about the shape of the eco-friendly rail systems that we need. Two centuries, almost, after we invented railways, where are our Stephensons or Brunels? Or even our Pépys?

Guillaume Pépy hopes that the French government will make the development of railways – and especially high-speed railways – one of the principal themes of its presidency of the European Union in the second half of this year. In particular, M. Pépy hopes that Paris will be able to persuade its European partners to back the latest bright idea to come from the SNCF: high-speed overnight goods trains.

Most of the high-value, next-day-delivery business, handled by FedEx, DHL and others, goes by air. The SNCF has been working with Air France and FedEx on the possibility of using high-speed railway lines at night to capture much of this traffic for rail (and reduce the level of carbon emissions per parcel by as much as 80 times). M. Pépy hopes that the idea – called "Carex" – can be spread Europe-wide, as Europe's high-speed rail network expands.

A couple of high-speed double-decker parcels trains on the new fast line between Paris and London would carry as much overnight cargo and parcels traffic as two jumbo jets. At present, the fast line to the Channel Tunnel is closed at night for maintenance. So are all the high-speed railway lines in France.

M. Pépy and the SNCF want to use these lines, after midnight, for a few high-speed "cargo express" trains. If spread across Europe, he believes that the idea would not only reduce carbon emissions but also radically reduce the cost of overnight letters and packages. The SNCF, FedEx and – interestingly – Air France have already commissioned preliminary studies for double-decker, TGV cargo trains, capable of carrying everything from a postcard to a full-size freight container. Such a network would help to reduce the noise nuisance of freight flights in the early hours. It would reduce transport carbon emissions. It would strengthen the economic and environmental case for the building of further high-speed railway lines.

The SNCF is already planning to introduce night TGV trains later this year. These will be "party" trains, aimed at young people who, as M. Pépy says, associate traditional overnight trains with "the smell of socks". On the new high-speed trains, bookable only on the internet, passengers will not be expected to sleep: they will dance, watch films, play games, or "do anything they like so long as it is decent".

"Only 12 per cent of Europe's carbon emissions come from transport," M. Pépy says. "But that 12 per cent is enormous. Everyone knows that it is going to be difficult to reduce the carbon footprint of industry and home-heating. All eyes will turn to transport. It will simply no longer be acceptable, in 20 or 30 years' time, that short-haul journeys between European cities are conducted by air transport. There must be a more rational division between the use of aircraft on medium - and long-haul journeys and high-speed railways for short-haul journeys."

What does M. Pépy mean by short haul? He suggested that all journeys up to at least 500km (or 300 miles) should naturally become rail journeys. In France – and increasingly in Italy, Spain and Germany – the high-speed lines are being built or planned which make that vision possible. The SNCF is already in discussion with the Spanish railways to create a new service from Brussels to Madrid, using high-speed lines in three countries.

By 2020, France should have 3,000km (1,864 miles) of high-speed railway line. President Nicolas Sarkozy recently promised that studies would commence on the building of another 2,000km of lignes à grande vitesse by 2030.

The extra lines are likely to include a new link across the breadth of the south of France from Toulouse to Nice and a second line to the French entrance to the Channel Tunnel, passing through Amiens instead of Lille. They are also likely to include a second trunk line from Paris to Lyons, to relieve Europe's first high-speed line, opened in 1981, which is approaching capacity.

All of these new lines may, if marketing and engineering studies prove positive, be constructed with their double tracks further apart. This would allow the SNCF to run a new generation of TGVs with service speeds up to 360km/h (224mph) instead of 280 to 320km/h on existing lines.

How exciting. How depressing.

The rebuilt London St Pancras station is magnificent but is likely to remain the terminus of a high-speed branch line. Given the muddle over routine maintenance of Britain's overburdened railway network, what is the hope of this, or any, British government taking the courageous, strategic decision to build lignes à grande vitesse to the north of England and Scotland?

If M. Pépy is right, air traffic between London and Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds – even Glasgow – will be politically and ecologically unacceptable in two decades' time. One strategically placed high-speed line up the spine of Britain could link 80 per cent of the nation's population. The cost of building such a line would be immense. So will be – already is – the cost of not doing so.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/com...cle3310022.ece

[sallythetolly]

Hello. Is anyone on this side of the Atlantic paying attention to this?

[mGUuZRyA]

It's a pity that Britain can't get its act together on railway policy, it lurches from crisis to crisis, charging more and more for an ever inferior quality of service!


Britain's return to work greeted by cancelled rail services and higher fares

By Jonathan Brown and Ben Russell

Published: 03 January 2008



Thousands of rail passengers will be forced to endure at least another day of misery and delays after two sets of major engineering works again overran yesterday, bringing travel chaos across the network and badly damaging the image of train travel in Britain.
Network Rail suffered a barrage of criticism from weary travellers, angry train operators and furious MPs, and is also facing an inquiry and the almost certain prospect of a heavy fine.


It said it hoped to resume full services on the West Coast Main Line by tomorrow, four days later than planned, after tens of thousands of passengers were forced to break their journeys through the Midlands to decamp to buses and connect with other lines.


Liverpool Street station in London should also be back to normal this morning. Commuters from East Anglia and suburban London only knew the work had overrun when they were confronted with the station's unexpected closure on returning from the Christmas break yesterday.


Meanwhile, speculation inside the industry was mounting that the problems dogging the £400m remodelling of Rugby station – a key part of the upgrading of the West Coast Main Line – are so severe that normal Virgin Train services between London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow may not resume until Monday. That would affect travel for the FA Cup third round – one of the busiest weekends of the year. Network Rail said it expected to make a further announcement later today.
The sense of outrage among the travelling public coincided with inflation-busting rises in ticket prices coming into force, with some fares soaring by 14.5 per cent. A fire leading to the evacuation of Birmingham International station only added to the sense of woe.


Network Rail's operations and customer services director, Robin Gisby, blamed a shortage of specialised engineering staff for the delays and issued an abject apology on behalf of the not-for-profit infrastructure company, created by the Government after the collapse of Railtrack in 2002.


"Both these overruns are completely unacceptable and an urgent investigation into what has gone wrong has been launched," he said. "We are deeply sorry for the further disruption this news will cause to passengers."
Chris Bolt, chairman of the rail regulator, said this week's problems were particularly worrying after Network Rail was fined £2.4m for failing to complete a signalling project at Portsmouth on time last Christmas. "It is extremely disappointing to have a repeat of that experience on key parts of the network," he said.


Virgin Trains, which faces paying out more than £10m in compensation, said it feared the experience endured by thousands of its customers could put many off travelling by rail.


"The question is, what have we lost in terms of goodwill? When something like this happens you lose customers for perhaps two years," said a spokesman.


The timing of the overruns could not be more damaging for the Government, which wants to double the number of passengers using Britain's railways by 2030. Labour has presided over a series of relatively generous funding deals in recent years after decades of underinvestment and privatisation.


But there is mounting anger among passengers, who have been told they will be forced to shoulder more of the financial burden for network improvements while critics say ministers continue to penalise rail users unfairly, as well as underestimating the full cost of building a modern transport system.


Theresa Villiers, the shadow Transport Secretary, said: "Labour has let rail passengers down badly. The Government now has more control of our railways than in the days of British Rail. They are the ones pushing the rail companies to hike up fares and they are the ones who have completely failed to get a grip of costs on the rail network."


Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, described the events as a "fiasco". He said: "This is a disgraceful way to run a railway. Passengers need to be able to plan their journeys with confidence."
Industry experts said the blame rested firmly at Network Rail's door. Roger Ford, technical editor of Modern Railways, said bosses had failed to guarantee contractors had sufficient manpower to complete the work on time, with many engineers choosing to spend this Christmas with their families after five festive seasons working.


"There is no shortage of expertise unless you want to have two big projects running at the same time and they both go slightly wrong. This has blown the credibility of Network Rail management big time. I cannot recall something like this happening in all my time on the railways," he said.




http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/tra...cle3303635.ece

[68AttendGem]

And yet ... most Americans would be amazed at the extent, speed and efficiency of British railways.

[Alupleintilla]

And yet ... most Americans would be amazed at the extent, speed and efficiency of British railways.

I'm truly amazed!!!!

[Queueftof]

^ Then you haven't ridden Amtrak.


(outside the Northeast Corridor.)

[xADMlNx]

^ Then you haven't ridden Amtrak.


(outside the Northeast Corridor.)

Do they have as many accidents, delays, (due to leaves on the line, the wrong kind of snow, etc), crowded trains, continuous track maintenance, and exorbitant prices as we do?

[Vapepreab]

It makes perfect sense that the high speed rail system works in France. The country is about the right size that a high speed rail system could provide transportation throughout the country in a reasonable time span.

Outside of the tightly packed northeast, the same is not true in this country.

[xsVfF9Em]

San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Las Vegas, would make sense I think. Also, the Acela Express route could be upgraded to European standards and possibly extended into Canada?

[Heaneisismich]

San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Las Vegas, would make sense I think.

California High Speed Trains

The argument that the US is not dense enough for railroad travel ignores pre WWII, when the country was still rural. In travel time, for anything under 800 miles, high speed train is competitive with airlines, especially when you factor in transportation to the city center.

What we need is the equivalent of the 1956 Federal Highway Act.

[aaaaaaahabbbby]

Do they have as many accidents, delays, (due to leaves on the line, the wrong kind of snow, etc), crowded trains, continuous track maintenance, and exorbitant prices as we do?

I think he was referring to the absence of trains altogether in swathes of the US.

As for the article, I know the frustration caused because I use that very line! However the work being done was for the East London Line Extension which will create a second orbital rail line for London which will aid regen - I use the

Accidents are very rare on British railways because previous accidents have forced safety standards through the roof. The last train crash I can recall was when a 100mph tilting train derailed, overturned in the air and came to rest back to front across an adjacent field. Only one person died and that was an elderly lady from the shock of the incident, not a single window was broken and the carriages remained intact. 10 years ago, that same accident would have led to the deaths of dozens.

British railways being dangerous is a myth as much as London always being subdued by fog. For example, more people die on French railways than in Britain and that is despite higher passenger use in Britain!

The issue is that people look at the TGV and believe the entire rail system is like that, when really it is an ego-trip (the entire TGV network carries fewer passengers than Virgin WCML) and absorbs far too much money. The French government even launched a report into the possibility that because the TGV absorbed so much, that two thirds of the French national network would be out of action by 2025 because there were no funds for renewal and modernisation.

HSR only really works where there are urban corridors, or connections between large populations and not a hub-spoke system. Japan shows how it works, and Britain needs one, in the US it would only work in the NEC. For Britain, I'm holding out for a maglev line, especially a connection between London Heathrow and Stansted Airports.

[ionitiesk]

British railways being dangerous is a myth

A chronology of some of the worst rail accidents in the UK:

10 May 2002: At least seven people have died and over 70 are injured after the WAGN 1245 service from London to Kings Lynn crashed at Potters Bar in Hertfordshire. Three of the four carriages derailed and one ploughed along the platform and smashed into a bridge. The accident is just a few miles from Hatfield, scene of a fatal crash in 2000.

28 February 2001: A GNER train from York to London King's Cross crashed at Great Heck between Goole and Selby, north Yorkshire, on the East Coast main line. A Land Rover slid down an embankment from the M62 into the path of an express train. The express was derailed by the impact and then collided with a freight train travelling in the opposite direction.

17 October 2000: Four people were killed and a further 35 were hurt when a GNER London to Leeds train, travelling at over 100mph, derailed at Hatfield, Hertfordshire. A broken rail was found to be the "substantial" cause of the accident.

5 October 1999:Thirty-one people were killed when two trains collided at Ladbroke Grove, just outside Paddington station, in London.

23 June 1999: Thirty-one people were injured after a London to Glasgow Virgin Rail train collided with a stationary local train near Winsford, Cheshire.

19 September 1997: A speeding express from Swansea to Paddington crashed into an empty freight train at Southall, killing seven people. The public Health and Safety inquiry into the crash opened in September 1999.

8 August 1996: One person killed and 69 people were injured when a train collided with a stationary passenger train at Watford South Junction in Hertfordshire.

31 January 1995: A guard was killed and 30 other people injured in an accident at Aisgill on the Settle to Carlisle line.

October 1994: Five killed and 12 injured in a head-on crash after driver ran a red signal near Cowden in Kent.

December 1991: Just over 100 people were injured when two trains bound for Cardiff collided deep inside the railway tunnel beneath the River Severn.

1990: A train driver was killed and 35 injured at Stafford station in a two-train crash in August.
Some months later, two passengers died and more than 240 were injured after a train ran into buffers at London's Cannon Street Station.
After that, four people died and 22 were injured in a head-on crash at Newton station near Glasgow.

March 1989: Five people died and more than 90 were injured when two trains collided outside Purley station in south London.
Two days later, two suburban electric trains in Glasgow collided head-on on a single track and two people died.
And on 30 November, 15 people were injured when two interCity expresses collided outside Newcastle upon Tyne Central Station.

12 December 1988: In the worst train accident of recent years, 35 people died in the Clapham Junction crash in a rush-hour collision.
The Hidden inquiry into the crash recommended the installation of automatic train protection (ATP) for the whole rail network. But the £750m price tag was considered too high by British Rail and the government, immediately prior to privatisation in 1993, and implementation of the safety system was ruled out.

November 1988: A train driver was killed and 18 passengers hurt when a commuter train ploughed into a bridge after leaving the tracks at St. Helens, Merseyside

October 1987: Four people died when a train fell into the swollen River Towy after the rail bridge collapsed. And in the same month 14 were injured when two trains collided at Forest Gate, on the Liverpool Street, London, line.

1986: A number of rail accidents resulted in 11 deaths and 123 people injured. The worst of these was on July 26, when nine people were killed and 11 injured when a passenger train hit a van on a level crossing at Lockington, Yorkshire. In September that year 60 were hurt and one killed in a collision between two express trains at Colwich, Staffordshire.

July 1984: 13 killed and 44 hurt in a derailment.

October 1979: Five killed and 52 hurt when two trains collide at Invergowrie after a warning signal is ignored by one of the drivers.

February 1975: 43 people died and 74 were hurt when a train hit the end of a cul-de-sac tunnel at Moorgate Underground station in central London.

June 1975: Two trains including the Euston to Glasgow sleeper service collided at Nuneaton station, Warwickshire, killing six people and injuring 67.

December 1973: A train derailed in Ealing, west London, killing 10 people and injuring 94.

May 1969: Six people died and 121 were injured when a London-Aberdeen express derailed at Morpeth in Northumberland.

November 1967: A derailment at Hither Green in south London killed 49 people and injured 78.

December 1957: A train ran through a red signal in the fog and collided with another train at Lewisham, south London, killing 90 people and injuring 173.

October 12, 1952: 112 people killed and 340 hurt when two express trains collided at Harrow and Wealdstone, in north west London, and a third train ran into the wreckage.

The UK's worst train crash was on May 22, 1915, when a wooden troop train and a passenger train collided at Quintinshill near Gretna Green, killing more than 200 people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/465475.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/..._the_railways/

[KatoabamyHant]

At least on a train your chances of survival are pretty high.

[exeftWabreava]

At least on a train your chances of survival are pretty high.

Yep, rail is safe; its the way forward.


At least Capn Pugwash acknowledges what I have said, that Britain's railways have become safer - of the last six serious crashes in the last 10 years, all were more than 6 years ago.

[mxzjxluwst]

Getting safer but a long way to go in terms of reliability, comfort, and COST!! You need to raise a second mortgage to travel on Britain's expensively-priced trains!

The Times January 03, 2007
Is rail network taking us for a ride?

Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

European tickets are a third the price
Prices on some routes rise by 11%


Long-distance rail travel is up to three times as expensive in Britain as in other European countries, a survey has found. Passengers travelling from London to Manchester pay £109.50 for a single rail ticket at peak time — the equivalent of 34p per kilometre for each of the 321km (199 miles) they travel, or 55p per mile.

Travellers from Paris to Calais, a slightly longer route, pay just £34.50, or 17p for each of the 205 miles travelled.
Furthermore, the French journey is much faster, at just one hour 13 minutes, compared to two hours 19 minutes in England.

Rail fares rose yesterday by more than 1 per cent above inflation for the fourth year running. Tickets on some routes increased by as much as 11 per cent.
The TSSA rail union compared the cost of standard single fares at peak times available on the day of travel.

In another example, a standard single ticket from London to Newcastle upon Tyne will set a passenger back £112 for a journey of 288 miles.
Yet travelling across Spain from Madrid to Barcelona, a journey of 387 miles, or from Berlin to Bonn in Germany, a trip of 365 miles, costs just £63 in each case.

Travelling via rail from Rome to Milan costs just £41.56 for the 392-mile trip. In Britain, a marginally longer journey, from London to Glasgow, is about three times that price, at £120 for the 402-mile trip. And while a ticket to ride from London to Liverpool (211 miles) now costs £102.50, a trip from Rome to Pisa (208 miles) costs just £32.44.

In Germany, a ticket from Berlin to Dresden (119 miles) costs £21.44, but a journey of similar length in England — London to Birmingham (121 miles) — costs £54.

To get the most mileage for their money, travellers in Britain could try the London to Inverness route. The 561-mile journey to the Scottish Highlands may take more than nine hours, but at £131.50 costs just 23p per mile.

A separate survey by the Liberal Democrats of metro fares has shown that Lon- don has the most expensive underground system in the world.

A single fare on the Paris Metro costs 96p, compared with £1.50 on London Underground using an Oyster card or £4 using cash.

The New York Metro system costs £1.07 per journey, Madrid 67p and Moscow 19p.

Fair fares?

34p
Cost per km for passengers travelling from London to Manchester
10.5p
Cost per km for passengers travelling from Paris to Calais
19p
Cost of a single journey on Moscow underground
96p
Cost of a single journey on Paris Metro
£4
Cost of a single journey on London Underground using cash
£54
Cost of 121 mile rail journey in Britain
£21.44
Cost of a 119 mile rail journey in Germany

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2528721.html

[HilaryNidierer]

The argument that the US is not dense enough for railroad travel ignores pre WWII, when the country was still rural. In travel time, for anything under 800 miles, high speed train is competitive with airlines, especially when you factor in transportation to the city center.

I don't see the connection to pre-WWII. We didn't have an extensive highway or airport network, so of course trains were the preferred mode of transportation. (Although they had already been on a downswing since the invention of the automobile for various inbred political/cultural reasons.)

What we need is the equivalent of the 1956 Federal Highway Act. We just need more funding for infrastructure in general. We're not spending nearly enough to keep up highways, bridges, etc.

I think the most pressing area to invest in rail is suburban America to get more commuters using mass transit. You'd have to build new lines, but in many cases, you already have rights of way by virtue of highways. Except for California and the DC-Boston corridor, I see little need for long-distance, high speed rail lines.

[HilaryNidierer]

I don't see the connection to pre-WWII.

Oh geez.

You answered it yourself: We didn't have an extensive highway or airport network, so of course trains were the preferred mode of transportation. So, it has nothing to do with the size or density of the US, right?

[pipittujbk]

Yes, of course it does. You use whatever transportation is available and most efficient at the time.

People used ships to cross the Atlantic before WW2. Does that mean it had nothing to do with the size of the ocean?

[huerta]

Start reading here, post #9.

Make sure you connect the dots.