Tuesday, April 03, 2007
The TGV Record
The BBC reports that a TGV (Train de Grande Vitesse, "train of great speed", a bullet train) made by Alstom has broken the previous speed record for trains on conventional tracks by going 574.8 km/h. That's about as fast as a 747 or an A380. It is no surprise to me that the record was set by a European company on contract for a European government. Japan would also have been expected. Between Europe and Japan, it's more of a which-company-was-it and what-technology-did-they-use kind of situation. What would really catch my attention would be news that an American company has broken the world speed record for any kind of train working on a contract for the U.S. government. That would be the day.
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If this is intended as a criticism of the US, I have to say that it is a bit unfair. Europe and Japan have a far greater population density than does the US, and even there the trains often operate on a deficit. In the States, such a system of trains would be financial black hole. While I agree with you that technologically the US is behind Europe and Asia in most areas -- this is pretty much fact -- trains are not a good measure of that difference because there is no real incentive for the development of faster TGVs here.
You're right about the population density. It was more intended as a perhaps somewhat unclear) comment on the differences in how people connect in the three places, especially the high reliance on cars here in the US. The thought that cars is what people have used very exclusively here for a long time to get around, and no one's thinking much of changing that was also rolling around in my head. Trains wouldn't perhaps be a good way to go here, but thinking should start before oil runs out. Or perhaps there is a way to make trains work that no one's thought of yet. Who knows?
But I've heard people say they'd rather take the bullet train than fly, let alone drive, elsewhere. It's just another manifestation of that in other places, people perceive the future as different from the past to a higher degree than in the US. That general phenomenon is both more interesting and more concerning than the trains per se.
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