Driving to destination is time consuming and your velocity is limited for security measures and sometimes you have to stop for refueling or to refresh yourself. The car still uses an obslete engine, an invention tha has more than a century of age, so while everything around it evolved we are actually going back to more traditional travelling ways. Airplanes are another viable way to go from point A to point B, it's fast and comfortable, but it has a major cons of polluting both the air with CO2 and with loud engine noises.
Countries arounf the world never put aside the ideas of developing a better existing transportation method like the train, because it's upkeep and work force cannot be overlooked for obvious economical and political reasons. So to bring the rails into the 21st century many countries decided to transform the train into something more useful and with less impact on the environment.
Back in 1939 the first high speed train was built in Italy, it's name was ETR 200 and had a top speed of 203 km/h. Since then the Japanese did it again in 1964 with the famous Bullet Train names Shinkansen reaching a top speed of 210 km/h and then 220 km/h. Both of them are called conventional trains because they use set of wheels on conventional rails built around the world.
However there is another type of track where high speed train can reach great velocities, they are called maglev (magnetic levitation) and use electric current on their track to generate a magnetic field of the same polarity that repel each other and generate the required push to move the train. The opposite happens instead when the train needs to break and to stop, the magnetic field is inverted with + and - polarity attracting the parts.
Maglev train in Japan (source: the internet)
The current world record holder is the MLX01 maglevel train
in central Japan with a top speed of 581 km/h (source: Wikipedia)
The TGV French high speed train is the fastest conventional train with top speed of 574.8 km/h (source: the inernet)
The Two main map of train tracks are spread in Europe and east Asia where there is a big need to move a high density of people who commute for work and for leisure. Different tracks have different speeds according to the status of the tracks. Newer tracks will have greater speeds reaching well over 400 km/h.
European map with red track being the fastest one (source: Wikipedia)
China, South Korea and Japan are the Asian countries to use high speed trains (source Wikipedia)
High speed trains are a viable alternative to airplanes, the construction and expansion of a line is a positive factor for any government because it moves people and goods faster in higher volumes and it also provide jobs on the construction sites and around it. Recently China announced that it is willing to expand its current hig speed train network to Europe with passengers being able to travel one way in jut two days. This will et China on a very important position wold wide for the import-export of their goods and natural resources. This has been considered to be the biggest infrastructure project in history.
But where is America? The United States had no absolutely no idea what's a high speed train until other countries started building their third generation trains, and they stood there looking and making fun at other countries because they thought "Why do we need trains when we have our big highways and cars that can take us anywhere we want!?". It didn't take long for the US to realize how behind they were in public transportation compared with Europe and Asia. The only fast rail the US has is the ACELIA that runs from Boston to Philadelphia via New York. How embracing for such a powerful country that can easily throw 1 trillion dollars out of the window for a faulty bailout of the banks.
The stimulus bill proposed by US President Obama included the designation of the future in America of the high speed railing system with an investmen of $8 billions. The East coast will be the one to enjoy more tracks from north to south, also the West coast will see only California and Oregon with smaller tracks, but the Midwest will have Chicago as a major hub.
We all know that the reason why America is behind other countries is the fact that the car and the oil industry want to continue to have the American citizens slave to the gasoline and to the four wheels. There is no other justification for not having a high speed train that can serve thousands of people every day to go to work and travel without starting a car engine.
But where is America? The United States had no absolutely no idea what's a high speed train until other countries started building their third generation trains, and they stood there looking and making fun at other countries because they thought "Why do we need trains when we have our big highways and cars that can take us anywhere we want!?". It didn't take long for the US to realize how behind they were in public transportation compared with Europe and Asia. The only fast rail the US has is the ACELIA that runs from Boston to Philadelphia via New York. How embracing for such a powerful country that can easily throw 1 trillion dollars out of the window for a faulty bailout of the banks.
The stimulus bill proposed by US President Obama included the designation of the future in America of the high speed railing system with an investmen of $8 billions. The East coast will be the one to enjoy more tracks from north to south, also the West coast will see only California and Oregon with smaller tracks, but the Midwest will have Chicago as a major hub.
Image source The Huffington Post
We all know that the reason why America is behind other countries is the fact that the car and the oil industry want to continue to have the American citizens slave to the gasoline and to the four wheels. There is no other justification for not having a high speed train that can serve thousands of people every day to go to work and travel without starting a car engine.
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