Chilean authorities Friday inaugurated the South American country's first high-speed train service. The convoy, which has four cars and can accommodate 236 passengers, links connects Santiago with Curicó in two hours and three minutes at a maximum speed of 160 km/h. Curicó is a rich agricultural production area known for its wine cellars.
Not particularly, but it’s important progress for a country with essentially zero inter-city trains running.
Such a pity too, the shape of the country just really seems to make so much sense for trains - just run a big north-south line and connect basically everything anyone would care about.
Building high quality rail networks requires legal framework to facilitate that given that initial costs are staggering. The US framework simply leaves everything to private initiative and given the multitude of local land regulation and lack of laws to support strategic mobilization at this scale, it is guaranteed the USA will never have a country-wide high speed rail network. There are just too many interests to satisfy in a very diverse legal landscape across cities, counties, and states.
160 is fast?
Not particularly, but it’s important progress for a country with essentially zero inter-city trains running.
Such a pity too, the shape of the country just really seems to make so much sense for trains - just run a big north-south line and connect basically everything anyone would care about.
Sure is compared to most trains in US.
Class 6 and above are pretty zippy
and about as common as a bigfoot
The US is a poor standard for high speed rail, or even trains in general. A better comparison would be with France, where trains can go up to 320kmph.
Chile is also… Not as flat as France.
Something also built by china might be a good comparison. The new high speed trains in Indonesia (also built by china) regularly go up to 350 kmph.
Building high quality rail networks requires legal framework to facilitate that given that initial costs are staggering. The US framework simply leaves everything to private initiative and given the multitude of local land regulation and lack of laws to support strategic mobilization at this scale, it is guaranteed the USA will never have a country-wide high speed rail network. There are just too many interests to satisfy in a very diverse legal landscape across cities, counties, and states.