Nearly two years after the planned date, the first two sets of the V250 "Albatros" have arrived in The Netherlands for testing and admission to the HSL-South. The V250 is expected to provide the domestic service in The Netherlands and was due to arrive in March, but technical problems have hindered the arrival.
Source: RTL News
Korea has recently launched a debate on a project to connect the southwestern Honam region and Jeju Island with an undersea tunnel for high-speed train services, signaling that the Korean version of Eurostar is a possibility.
The project entails building three separate lines ― 66-kilometers, from Mokpo to Haenam; 28-kilometers Haenam-Bogil Island; and 73-kilometers, Bogil Island-Chuja Island-Jeju. The last line would be linked by a high-speed train through an undersea tunnel. When connected with other major railway lines across the Honam region and the rest of the country, major inland cities and Jeju will be connected by train for the first time.
The project is expected to serve as a new tool for growth for two of the most underdeveloped parts of the nation located in the southwestern part of the Korean Peninsula. The ``underwater train'' is to be operated in conjunction with the Seoul-Mokpo express train project currently underway.
The National Assembly held a special forum last week to discuss and publicize the Honam-Jeju Undersea Rail project. Participants were mostly in agreement of its necessity, especially in light of the nation's urgent task to achieve a balanced development nationwide.
In the year since the Madrid-Barcelona line opened in February 2008, the AVE, costing passengers roughly the same as what they would pay to fly, has snatched half the route's air-passenger traffic.
"We had expected it to be mostly business travelers on this line," says Julio Hermida, a spokesman for Renfe, the state train operator. "But we're finding it's just as busy on the weekends," as Barcelona residents discover Madrid and vice-versa, despite a long-lived rivalry between the two cities. "To some extent, it's changing the way people think about each other."
Not everyone is pleased. ETA, the militant Basque separatist group, has said it would target anyone involved in the construction of a high-speed train line that will connect the restive northern region with Madrid and France. In December, ETA killed the owner of a company working as a contractor on the project, and in February detonated a bomb at the headquarters of Ferrovial SA, another contractor working on the project.
Other, nonviolent critics say the country's massive investment in high speed rail has come at the expense of other, less-glamorous forms of transportation. Starved of funds, Spain's antiquated freight-train network has fallen into disuse, forcing businesses to move their goods around by road. That means the Spanish economy is unusually sensitive to changes in the price of crude oil.
Critics say the AVE will never stop losing money. Even its backers say high-speed rail can only be economical if the state bears much of the construction costs. But they say the train's benefits-lower greenhouse-gas emissions, less road congestion and, in Spain's case, greater social cohesion and economic mobility-make it an investment worth making.
President Barack Obama released a strategic plan last week that outlines his vision for developing high-speed rail in the United States.
The plan draws on $13 billion in federal investment as a down payment on a world-class passenger rail system consisting of 10 high-speed rail corridors. The initial federal investment would consist of $8 billion in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), plus $1 billion per year for the next five years as requested in the federal budget.
The high-speed rail corridors run along the East Coast and most of the West Coast, and form networks in the Northeast, Midwest and South, with each corridor extending 100 to 600 miles.
Scotland must be fully connected to any UK high speed rail network, Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson said today.
The Minister was speaking ahead of his meeting with UK Rail Minister Lord Adonis.
He said:
"There is no doubt that a high speed rail link connecting Scotland, London and Europe would bring significant economic and environmental benefits.
"Improved journey times could provide significant benefits to Scotland's economy, improving connections and opening up new opportunities. Shorter journeys could also drive a real travel shift from air to rail and significantly reduce our emissions.
"Lord Adonis recently asked High Speed 2 (HS2) to examine the potential for expanding high speed services to Scotland and I will ensure Scotland's voice is heard in this work. It is important HS2 works up a fully developed case for a high speed rail project that links Scotland to the major capitals of Europe.
"While we support High Speed links to Edinburgh and Glasgow it is vital these connect effectively to our existing network so that all parts of the country can enjoy the benefits."
Source: The Scottish Government
Saudi Railways Organisation decided to delay the tender for the second phase of the Haramain high-speed railway between the holy cities of Mecca and Mediana while the designs for the future railway stations were completed.
At the beginning of April, the Organisation hired the British company Foster & Partners for the design of five railway stations (in Mecca, Jeddah, Jeddah International Airport, King Abdullah Economic City and Medina). The due date of the contract is November 2009. The SRO originally wanted to start the tendering process for the contracts to build the stations in April, but "it has been decided that the project needed world-class station designs because of the importance of the holy cities,"says one official at the SRO.
The tender could be issued in the third or fourth financial quarters of the year, the contract including only the construction works. The Organisation expects five consortiums to bid: one led by Saudi Binladin Group and Spain's Obrascon Huarte Lain (OHL); the Al-Shoula consortium, led by the Canada-based Vision Transportation Group; the Saudi-Japanese group, led by Acwa Power International and Mitsubishi; the Al-Rajhi Alliance, led by Mada Group; and the Saudi Oger consortium.
Source: steelmillsoftheworld.com
A high-speed rail link between Helsinki and St. Petersburg is to come into service in the autumn of 2010. The new rail link, named Allegro, is intended to shorten the journey time between Helsinki and St. Petersburg at first to three and a half hours and later to three hours, down from the current five and a half hours.
In comparison, the flight to the neighbouring metropolis takes four to five hours, calculated from home in Finland to the office in St. Petersburg. Director Mireta Humalamäki, of insurance company If, intends to make her business trips entirely by train in the future, if the new Allegro trains turn out to be reliable, reaching their destination on time. Another If director Lisbeth Norrgård-Eklund also plans to start using the trains, at least partly. - Unless there are similar problems to those we had earlier with the Pendolino,- she adds.
The Pendolinos are Finnish Railways' (VR) Italian-built high-speed tilting trains, which have had some serious reliability issues as they came to terms with the Finnish winter.
Foster + Partners has been appointed the designer for four stations on the Haramain high-speed railway
In a joint venture with Buro Happold, the new project will link the holy cities of Mecca and Medina via Jeddah, Rabigh and King Abdullah Economic City on the Red Sea coast. It will offer a faster service for the millions of pilgrims conducting the Haj and Umrah pilgrimages.
The Saudi Rail Organisation is the client for the project, which has an estimated project value of $6 billion. Trains running on the 444km line are expected to reach 300km/h. The project is due for completion by 2013.
Mouzhan Majidi, Chief Executive of Foster + Partners, said: 'The Haramain high-speed rail project represents a major investment in sustainable public transport by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with potentially far-reaching social and economic consequences. The project will foster new social and cultural connections across the Kingdom's western cities, and the design of the four new stations will support and symbolise this progressive approach.'
Source:Architects Journal
Italy's newly launched state-run high-speed rail service between Milan and Rome will face private competition from 2011. Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori late last month announced it will launch a three-times daily service between Italy's commercial and political capitals to compete with the nationalized Ferrovie dello Stato Frecciarossa "Red Arrow" service, which started operations in December 2008.
NTV intends to operate numerous other routes down the spine of Italy from Turin in the north to Salerno in the south, using a fleet of 25 trains built by French manufacturer Alstom. The new-generation AGV trains are capable of speeds of up to 360 km per hour, and NTV said it would complete journeys from Milan to Rome in three hours. The Frecciarossa currently take 3.5 hours, which is already one hour faster than previous services on the 500-km route. This is expected to be reduced when a new stretch of high-speed rail opens between Florence and Bologna, scheduled for the end of 2010. The Frecciarossa also has an advantage in operating a much more frequent 18 times daily.
Source: BTN Online
hree New England rail corridors are eligible to receive billion of dollars for high-speed rail under a set of preliminary guidelines the Obama administration unveiled today.
But the proposed high-speed routes, which would connect Boston to Montreal, Albany, N.Y., and Portland, Maine, will likely face stiff competition from California and a coalition of Midwestern states who want the funds for their own corridors. Both regions are further along than New England in planning for high-speed rail and are thought to be frontrunners for much of the funding.
President Obama, who touted high-speed rail's economic and environmental benefits in a speech this morning, hopes to make expanding the nation's passenger rail network one of his signature issues. The economic stimulus package he signed in February included $8 billion for upgrades to fast trains, and the administration has also asked for another $1 billion annually for the next five years.
"High-speed rail is long-overdue, and this plan lets American travelers know that they are not doomed to a future of long lines at the airports or jammed cars on the highways," Obama said.
On April 9, 2009, SNCF President Guillaume Pepy and Karim Ghellab, Minister of Transport in Morocco, signed two contracts which establish the conditions for the provision of technical assistance and expertise services from SNCF for the high speed railway line linking Tanger and Kenitra (north of Casablanca). The contracts were awarded despite the protocol signed in October 2007 between the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the King of Morocco Mohammed VI, concerning the development of the high speed line project. The first contract for technical assistance ensures project coordination and coherence, and the second one for expertise services ensures track and rolling stock design, construction, operation, exploitation and maintenance, shows the official press release issued by SNCF.
According to the Moroccan Minister of Transport, SNCF International and Inexia, another branch of SNCF, will design, build and ensure track maintenance. They will also help Moroccan Railways to manage the rolling stock. The EUR 1.8 Billion project will be finalized in 2016 and it will carry 8 million passengers.
Source: SNCF
The Argentine government has - for the first time since the High Speed Line between Buenos Aires and Cordoba had been awareded to Veloxia - admitted that there is no sufficient funding for the project. Ricardo Jaime, minister of transport, announced that the project (which was projected to cost $ 4.000 bn, but whose nominal value was much more than that) is currently on hold.
As part of the international crisis and little chance of getting a loan, the minister acknowledged that there is no funding, but said that "the work will be reactivated if they get the necessary funds." He further remarked that "it is a decision taken by the executive branch." Ricardo Jaime emphasized that despite the financial crisis, the high speed line project in Brazil "has just announced that there are three groups involved in the construction of a high-speed train between San Pablo and Rio de Janeiro."
The postponement of the work does not provide a legal problem for the country.
Everywhere you look, from Argentina to Saudi Arabia, there's a country planning a new high-speed rail line. Inspired by the success of fast train systems in Europe and Japan, politicians see these links as a way to speed travel between major cities, reduce carbon emissions, and spark smart urban development. President Obama shares those goals and devoted $8 billion to HSR in the stimulus bill.
This chart compares seven lines on four continents that are either in the engineering phase or already under construction. They range in size from the diminutive 34-mile project that will connect Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to the gargantuan 818-mile link between Beijing and Shanghai. The variations in construction cost per mile and local meaning of the term "high speed" are almost as great.
Source: Infrastructurist
