Dashing and dawdling

A glossy magazine insert in my daily newspaper had a revealing graphic about high speed trains in various countries. The speeds are shown in the obsolete US notation, MPH, rather than KPH, but make the point regardless. The slowest are the Belgian and Italian high speed trains; they reach 190 MPH; the Eurostar (London-Paris via the Channel Tunnel) hits 200 MPH on the sturdy French tracks, noticeably less as it crosses Kent and descends below the English Channel. In France, TGVs travel at 240 MPH. Japanese Shinkansen ("Bullet") trains and the German Transrapid reach 275 MPH. The fastest are the new Chinese high speed trains, which use an innovative propulsion system I learnt about in First Year University physics in 1944; they average just over 300 MPH but theoretically could travel at twice that speed. I've traveled on all except the Chinese high speed trains. They are all very comfortable and most are quiet. The Eurostar scores highest in my experience for comfort and quiet - and serves gourmet meals and very good wines. The Shinkansen can be noisy, but it has an unblemished safety record, no accidents in over 40 years. Indeed, all these high speed trains have excellent safety records, except the Eurostar and the newest entry in the field, the Chinese trains, each of which has had one or two crashes, though none with major loss of life or even injuries.  

London to Paris, Geneva to Paris  in 3 hours! With trains this fast, there's no contest with air travel: add check-in time and planes in line for an hour or more waiting to take off, and it's time-saving as well as much less stressful to take the train. If you've a mind to, you can get a lot of work done on one of these train journeys.

Intercity trains in Canada aren't included in the graphic. It's embarrassing to reflect how far behind Canada has fallen. Ottawa-Toronto "express" trains go as fast as they can on dubiously secure rail-beds with the antiquated diesel engines that pull them. For several brief periods they achieve 100 MPH, but the average speed is below 75 MPH. There are many level crossings as well as unreliable rails and rolling stock, and most trains make several stops. The Ottawa-Toronto trip typically takes 5 hours for a journey that a TGV or Shinkansen could make in well under 2 hours. 

In the early 1970s there was talk about modernizing train service in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, with a diversion through Ottawa. There's been occasional desultory talk about modernizing train services ever since. Lately there have been subversive murmurs about contracting out to China the work of strengthening the rail-bed, constructing under-passes and bridges to eliminate the level crossings for many of which current trains must slow down, perhaps even allowing China to supply rolling stock.  It won't happen in my lifetime. Perhaps my grandchildren will live long enough to travel by train from Ottawa to Toronto in less than 2 hours, but I wouldn't bet on it.