The Top 10 High Speed Rail Systems in the World!

Thanks for making this understandable for me. If it's not a top ten list, I just can't make sense of it at all

As an Italian, it's not important to be first, it's important to be above France

As someone who has actually visited Inner Mongolia a few times, I would argue that a line between Beijing and Hohhot (the capital of Inner Mongolia) isn't really that much of a stretch given that it's not a super long distance and Hohhot is actually a reasonably large city. It's the line to Urumqi that has a questionable business case IMO due to the huge distance and limited intermediate stops, but then again that line was never built for economic reasons but as an exercise in nation building (just as the new semi-high speed (160km/h) line from Chengdu to Lhasa will be when it is completed in a few years - that line is so incredibly challenging to build and so expensive that it'd never be built if it was just about economics).

10th Morocco 1:17 9th UK 2:17 8th Taiwan 3:14 7th Germany 4:25 6th Korea 6:00 5th France 7:59 4th Italy 9:22 3rd Japan & Spain 10:23 1st China 12:24

Start of the video: It's not necessarily China End of the video: But it is China 😅

As someone who has extensively traveled Japan (just returned from my 17th trip last week....) I might be biased, but I still think they're on a different level from all of the others. Mostly because of the frequency, punctuality and ease of use. Even when not all shinkansen stations are right in the city center (like Shin-Osaka), this is rarely an issue because of the normal rail network. And what good is a high speed rail train if you have to wait an hour before it departs, or have to be early because of additional security checks? Getting from central Tokyo to central Kyoto can be quicker than getting to some of the outskirts of Tokyo.... That said, the network China built is truly impressive, and despite having a few issues Japan doesn't, it still often preferable over air traffic. Most of all, it shows what high speed rail in Europe could have been, if all countries and companies involved would have been on the same page instead of all trying to invent the wheel.

Hi I’m a Chinese citizen who has lived in Shanghai for about ten years. And my hometown, haha, is the place where you said existing overbuild phenomenon of high speed railway network, Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The truth I saw and came through by myself is, since the high speed railway has reached my hometown city from Dec.,2019, the Beijing-Hohhot high speed railway line replaced the airline between the two cities above very soon. Additionally, if I want to go home from Beijing by the high speed trains, I always need to buy tickets ahead for at least 3 days, or I can’t have a seat backing Hohhot😂 Although the passenger flow is lower than those in east of China, like Beijing — Shanghai high speed railway, it is still the first choice of people from Inner Mongolia, especially mid-west area, to go to Beijing and other places of China😅

I would consider HS1 in England to be the northern end of the LGV Nord line in France. It is built to French rather than British specifications though they are quite similar, and its main purpose is to allow Eurostar trains to reach London, and Eurostar is basically the international division of SNCF. South Eastern Railways high speed services from London to Kent only exist because the line was built anyway from the Eurostar budget, it has spare capacity, and they may as well use it for something; otherwise it wouldn't have been the top priority for investing in high speed rail services.

Seems generous to put the U.K. in the top ten.

In Spain we have security to boarding high-speed trains due to the terrorist atacks of 2004, the fear of having an explosion at 290 Km/h was very significant and they decided to have security, however, is much faster that airports, no more than 2 minutes.

The most frustrating thing about HS2 is that the people most vociferously opposed to it were the ones directly responsible for driving up the costs so much, which they then use as evidence why it should be scrapped. Environmentalists and NIMBYs formed an unholy alliance to challenge it at every turn, massively increasing the legal and land acquisition costs of the project, and forcing more of it to be laid in expensive tunnels as a response to their (mostly) bogus concerns. Still others whine "the money could be spent on improving local and regional services", completely failing to understand that HS2 is designed to relieve congestion on the West Coast Main Line, allowing more capacity for local services. Damn nimbys, I hate them so much.

As a Spanish I can say that airport security is not really "airport security". In just 5 minutes you've gone past it, is like the security at the entrance of official government places, just a bag scanner and a police officer there watching.

I remember identifying three kinds of HSR-system shapes. Leaving aside the smaller systems, 1. Linear: Japan, Italy 2. Hub-and-spoke: France, Spain, S Korea 3. Network: China, Germany This is in order of least to most construction needed for good coverage. One can easily see why Germany has such an inadequate HSR system, and what was necessary for China’s HSR success.

The reason Spanish stations have airport-style security is because of the Madrid terrorist bombings of commuter trains back in 2004. Japanese stations don't do this because they obviously don't have this problem. That aside, we are proud of the high-speed system of our southern Korean brothers. We hope that when we reunify, the system will be able to expand to the rest of the peninsula. And a huge kudos to China's HSR network. Being able to expand so fast, on top of accounting for two-thirds of ALL of the world's HSR, is an incredible feat. They've shown that being a big country with different environments doesn't matter and built a huge network anyway. They believed and never gave up. This should be a wakeup call for the US to follow. Also, you missed the Seoul to Gangneung portion of the KTX map at 6:11 that was opened for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang! That helped so many people get to the Games!

As a Brit currently in China, I've been so impressed by the trains here. What's just as impressive is the supporting infrastructure they've built to make the network so well connected. They've built endless bridges and tunnels in the most difficult places. Yes, there is a security check, but it's pretty quick. Just like in Spain.

The thing about Germany is that citys are many but not that big. I believe that it makes it difficult to build high speed rail lines, since there are so many places to either through or around

While visiting relatives in 2018, we took the high-speed rail from Beijing to Shanghai. The experience was incredible. The distance was the same from Detroit to Jacksonville, Florida, and it took four hours! My wife left a cup of water on the windowsill, and there was not even a ripple from any sort of train shaking. To me, it is the standard for high-speed rail!

Bit of a controversial opinion perhaps, but I'm a big fan of prioritizing fast conventional rail over true high speed rail. Conventional rail does a great job of serving much larger numbers of people, making trains much more accessible for large parts of the country. In fact, I'd argue that conventional rail is an absolute prerequisite for good high speed rail service, since it makes it easier to access those high speed trains all the while serving huge numbers of different trips. HSR also has a very dangerous "flashiness factor" that makes it a very appealing prestige project for politicians. Not a single politician is gonna put "several incremental improvements that ensure better and more consistent train service to a larger number of people" on their resume, which is kinda the point. HSR has the risk of draining the rest of the train network of resources.

It is a bit upsetting to constantly hear you have to go through "airport style security" to ride a high-speed Spanish train. It is basically a scanner for your baggage, you have to get rid of your coat, period. You do not have to go yourself through a scanner, get rid of your belt, or any of that. It takes 2 minutes, as anyone who has tried it can attest. Hardly the inconvenience people seem to think it is.

As a Spaniard I must say our airport style security check at stations isn't that much of a problem, it usually takes less than 15 minutes in the worst of cases which is a bit disturbing but won't make much of a difference