Infrastructurist Compares HSR Projects Around the World

Yonah Freemark, who runs the excellent The Transport Politic, also writes for Infrastructurist where earlier this week he posted a a great chart comparing HSR projects around the world, including our own:


(Click for full size image)

The chart compares our project to the Beijing-Shanghai HSR route, Argentina's TAVe, Israel's Tel Aviv-Jerusalem route, HSL Zuid from the Netherlands to Belgium and Paris, Lyon-Torino, and Saudi Arabia's HSR plan. Our cost per mile is third highest, but does much better than the shorter HSL Zuid line and is comparable with the Lyon-Torino line (whose high costs are likely due to Alpine tunneling).

It also shows a wide difference in what is actually considered as "high speed rail" - only our project, Argentina's, and China's will provide average speeds above 150 mph.

Ultimately this shows that California is actually getting a lot of bang for our buck. We're getting a much longer route than the higher cost trains in Europe. Sure, we're not looking at Chinese levels of cost, but then I don't think we will either want or would accept the labor standards and wages of China either.