Chinese style high-speed rail network needed for Europe

[Stephen Lee]

It is true that more Chinese enterprises set up their offices in Europe under the Belt and Road Initiative project, CRRC is no exception, but in the following article, I wondered what do they mean for "Chinese style high-speed rail network", does it mean CRRC may institute a high-speed train model to compete with Siemens/Alstom?

https://www.railjournal.com/infrast...l-network-needed-for-europe-siemens-mobility/

A Chinese-style high-speed rail network is needed to connect Europe, Siemens Mobility rolling stock CEO Mr Albrecht Neumann told IRJ in Potsdam on August 23.

Even though China has already constructed the world’s largest high-speed rail network, it now plans to double the size of the network by 2035, with 49 HSR projects in China in various stages from feasibility studies through to construction and commissioning according to IRJ Pro.

Neumann says that routes such as Paris – Madrid would be perfect for high-speed services. He told IRJ that he thought journeys of around 2h 30min by air would make sense to transfer to high-speed rail, but that the infrastructure was required.

He compared the speed of planes in the air, around 800km/h, to the speed of a high-speed train, around 360km/h, but said that while that may not be competitive, once the time spent waiting in airports as well as the journeys to and from the airports is taken into account, then rail becomes much more appealing....

 

[yorksrob]

What exactly would be the difference between a "Chinese-style" high speed rail network" and the high speed rail network that Europe already has ?

 

[Stephen Lee]

What exactly would be the difference between a "Chinese-style" high speed rail network" and the high speed rail network that Europe already has ?

I don't know

 

[jamesontheroad]

Like their belt and road investments worldwide, rendered without competition to Chinese contractors and built using Chinese labourers?

 

[Giugiaro]

Like their belt and road investments worldwide, rendered without competition to Chinese contractors and built using Chinese labourers?

And possibly also owned and operated by Chinese conglomerates and workforce.

That has sort of been their "Chinese Style" of maritime ports.

 

[mike57]

Delivered in a reasonable timescale maybe... But unless there was a big cut back in red tape they would be working under the same constraints as the local rail network

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Maybe they mean a centrally planned and funded grid of high speed lines across Europe, mainly north-south and east-west.
While the EU has its TEN transport policy and partially funds worthy schemes, the states decide routes and services, or even whether to have high speed at all.
We all know that cross-border routes/services are difficult to develop in the EU system.
China also places very large orders for infrastructure and trains, lasting decades, which must be great for a contractor like Siemens.
The European style is much more fragmented, with a lot of national exceptionalism (with the UK as a prime example).
I can't see the EU being granted the powers by the states to build such a system.
And who would pay for it?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Like their belt and road investments worldwide, rendered without competition to Chinese contractors and built using Chinese labourers?

That was my thought.

China doesn't understand European demographics, anyway. China is a big place but with a load of rural nothingness and a small number of very, very large megacities. Europe is much more distributed.

I'm sure they have them in some form, but the idea of an hourly regional stopping service is not really big in China, I'd say. It's more high speed to get between megacities then city metros.

 

[Stephen Lee]

Like their belt and road investments worldwide, rendered without competition to Chinese contractors and built using Chinese labourers?

There are cases of Build–operate–transfer

 

[Gag Halfrunt]

The article is paywalled so I can't read it, but i doubt that Albrecht Neumann of Siemens would advocate the involvement of Chinese companies, which are his competitors.

China also places very large orders for infrastructure and trains, lasting decades, which must be great for a contractor like Siemens.

The newest Fuxing high speed trains are entirely homegrown (officially at least).

Fuxing (train) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[dutchflyer]

These are some of the wonders of that CR Hi-speed Ive seen-whereas quite incidentally I am now on my 1st day of a long InterRail sitting in Tours/FR and had today to cope with a very busy weekend coming up and the quest to get some reasonable TGV/InOUI or whatever they happen to call it this week supplements. First new visit to FR since some 3 years. SNCF also seems to completely done away with any printed ´fiches-horaires´. Plus that most travel-´offices´ in fairly major towns have very restricted opening hours now. Plus that more and more Paris suburban stations are completely gated without any hint to get in with such an InterRail.

In China the HS network is mostly completely well outside the centre areas of those major megacities-so that new metroś also have to be built to reach them-hence China has now 30+ urban metro (underground sometimes-not always) systems-but West-Europe already had that number. These are main incentives to swallow up nature as ricefields and transform them into new sizeable uptodate areas of those megacities with often lots of quite empty hi-rise office blocks.

Since a few yrs the big majority of travellers use the all-China ´apps´ which are all integrated in their fones-Oppo or Huawei-weChat to buy the tickets. It also allows big dad government to get all data from people who according to their fones have travelled-if only passed through non stop-in Covid hit areas.

IF you as a dumb gwailo just come to a station expecting to get a ticket you are in for a big nasty shock. OTOH there seem to be no advance fares or even much variation in the govt-set fares, which as such are much higher as the old ones for ord. trains. Also no seasons or whatever of the kind-neither in those metroś-just your fare every time with a chipcard.

The HS trains of course have 2+3 seats. There also seems still to be a fairly smart system of quotes/portions for minor stops en-route, so that pax descending there come from just 1 car of the 12 or 16 and the empty seats are thus destined for those able to board there. Perhaps if you're lucky or able to get behind the secrets of how/when a screaming girl in a kind of stewardess dress will pass by with an old cart selling whatever unrecognisable things the state 5-year program has ordered for that region or train-but as the biggest surprise it may even be *Bucky cf! But as a modernisation compared to the old system there are no more 1 staff member per car (or 2 if it runs night and day).

Of course they are all run and organised by just 1 big state company from which noone is able to get reliable info on if it makes profits or losses. Imagine EU-state Hi-Speed!

Those new stations are mostly set up as efficient airports where you are only allowed to go up the platforms-which are like here in FR only announced some 15-20 mins before by going via gates which you need to feed the magnetic stripe ticket or show the code on your phone AND your state run ID-you may also be refused if something is signalled to be out of order with that. Again as a dumb gwailo you will thus be singles out. If they are a little older-say 4-5 yrs, cracks/leaky spots/rots in the concrete will start to appear.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The HS trains of course have 2+3 seats.

They do, but they are also very wide (over 3m) and so while a middle seat is rubbish (as it always would be) it's not that cramped.

 

[JonasB]

Maybe they mean a centrally planned and funded grid of high speed lines across Europe, mainly north-south and east-west.
While the EU has its TEN transport policy and partially funds worthy schemes, the states decide routes and services, or even whether to have high speed at all.

That is how I interpret it. Europe could use a European high speed rail network and not a collection of national networks.

There are many examples of cities where high(er) speed rail would make sense, but there is none due to national borders.

 

[Giugiaro]

That is how I interpret it. Europe could use a European high speed rail network and not a collection of national networks.

There are many examples of cities where high(er) speed rail would make sense, but there is none due to national borders.

The EU has the so-called "Corridors", which are meant both for Passengers and Freight.
The "Corridors" have both increased interoperability through the use of ERTMS and gauge standardization, but also the implementation of either higher speed segments, or completely new highspeed parallel lines.

It turns out that getting these "Corridors" built isn't exactly a big priority for each individual country.
Sure, they're always talked about when (re)building other unrelated lines, but the reality is that most of these are only being built (or are currently in operation) within the borders of the countries first, with many modernized "to the border" projects not meeting the same level of commitment on the other side of the squiggly line.

The vast majority of the Transeuropean Rail Network is planned to be built well ahead of 2025, or even the 2030s.

Then you have setbacks, like in the Atlantic Corridor which had Portugal completely, and unilaterally, cancel their highspeed network in its entirety, leaving the Spanish scratching their heads as the AVE gets ever so closer to Badajoz and not even a single gram of dirt was lifted from the Portuguese side for almost a decade already.

 

[Austriantrain]

There are many examples of cities where high(er) speed rail would make sense, but there is none due to national borders.

And which ones would these be?

It remains a fact that the vast majority of travel takes place in a domestic context. The idea that you can finance (!) and build a HS network specifically for international use in Europe is non-viable. It will always be a combination of domestic and international demand.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I've just been reading about Hitler's (sorry!) pre-war plan for a Breitspurbahn (3m gauge) Europe-wide rail network.
It was planned to run across "Greater Germany": Paris-Antwerp-Berlin-Kyiv-Rostov and Hamburg-Berlin-Prague-Vienna-Budapest-Belgrade-Bucharest-Istanbul.
It never got beyond the drawing board, and the Reichsbahn thought it was impractical and wanted 4-tracking of existing lines instead.
Breitspurbahn - Wikipedia

Hitler embraced a suggestion from Fritz Todt to build a new high-capacity Reichsspurbahn (Imperial Gauge Railway) with notably increased gauge. Objections from railway experts – who foresaw difficulties in introducing a new, incompatible gauge (and proposed quadruple track standard gauge lines instead), and who could not imagine any use for the vast transport capacity of such a railway – were ignored, and Hitler ordered the Breitspurbahn to be built with initial lines between Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich and Linz.
The project engaged commercial partners Krauss-Maffei, Henschel, Borsig, Brown, Boveri & Cie and Krupp, but did not develop beyond line planning and initial survey. Throughout World War II, 100 officials and 80 engineers continued to work on the project

Apparently during WW2 the resources earmarked for the project, including PoWs and slave labour, were sent to the eastern front to re-gauge the railways in occupied Soviet territory to standard gauge.
We are probably very lucky that this network was never built.

 

[JonasB]

The EU has the so-called "Corridors", which are meant both for Passengers and Freight.
The "Corridors" have both increased interoperability through the use of ERTMS and gauge standardization, but also the implementation of either higher speed segments, or completely new highspeed parallel lines.

It turns out that getting these "Corridors" built isn't exactly a big priority for each individual country.
Sure, they're always talked about when (re)building other unrelated lines, but the reality is that most of these are only being built (or are currently in operation) within the borders of the countries first, with many modernized "to the border" projects not meeting the same level of commitment on the other side of the squiggly line.

I'm aware of the corridors. They are a good start, but as you mention they are rarely a big priority on a national level. Gothenburg-Oslo is a great example that has been neglected on both sides of the border for many years.

And which ones would these be?

Madrid-Lisbon
Stockholm-Oslo
Trondheim-Östersund
Amsterdam-Berlin
Seville-Faro
Vienna-Brno
Lyon-Geneva
Ljubljana-Trieste
München-Freising

And more

It remains a fact that the vast majority of travel takes place in a domestic context. The idea that you can finance (!) and build a HS network specifically for international use in Europe is non-viable. It will always be a combination of domestic and international demand.

It also remains a fact that most national politicians plan infrastructure from a domestic point of view, which I can understand. And that crossing borders are not a big issue within the Schengen area. I'm not proposing a separate high speed network for only international trains, but an upgrade of the many weak links within Europe.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

What exactly would be the difference between a "Chinese-style" high speed rail network" and the high speed rail network that Europe already has ?

Not sure... possibly savings from using what is effectively slave labour for the construction. [/cynic]

 

[Gostav]

Not sure... possibly savings from using what is effectively slave labour for the construction. [/cynic]

This reason has become the explanation for the serious overspending and delays of almost all projects in Europe. I heard someone talked about this issue. He mentioned that the cost of construction workers in China isn't as low as (Western) people think. If simile project by European workers (don't forget there are also have many cheap workers from Eastern Europe) and abide by law, that would be doubles the cost at most and that cannot explain the huge overruns of some "famous" delayed projects. The only explanation is corruption.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

There's a cautionary tale about Chinese construction methods in the Balkans, although it's about a road not a railway.
China was contracted to build a new highway in Montenegro, and the first 40km is ready - but Montenegro can't afford to pay for it.
If they fail to pay, China has the right to demand payment in kind, by acquiring land to the value of the road.
There's probably corruption on both sides, and some murky "great game" politics going on.
Montenegro expects the EU to bail it out, despite not being a member.
How A Chinese-Built Highway Drove Montenegro Deep Into Debt : NPR

The project — a 25-mile section of a proposed 270-mile highway that would run from Montenegro's Port of Bar on the Adriatic Sea to Belgrade, the capital of neighboring Serbia — is not only raising questions about decisions made by Montenegro's previous leaders and unsustainable debts associated with China's ambitious infrastructure and trade initiative across several continents. It also has implications for China's growing influence along the European Union's periphery, and whether the EU missed an opportunity to help Montenegro out.

Montenegro's population is about the same as that of Sheffield.

 

[quantinghome]

I assume a 'Chinese style high-speed network' means one that is actually high speed, and actually a network. Some high speed lines in Europe are decent (e.g. Paris-Marseilles) but far too many 'high speed' lines have ended up with very poor average speeds. Brussels-Amsterdam is nearly two hours for a journey little over 200km. Brussels-Cologne, and pretty much anywhere in Germany have the same problem. Paris-Berlin is less than 1100km and should be do-able by high speed rail in 4 hours; at present you'd be lucky to do it in 8. And on top of the low speeds there's the perennial problem of ticketing, which should be slick and joined up, but isn't.

I would define a true high speed rail network as one that serves every conurbation with more than 1 million people with trains with an average end-to-end speed >250kph. That's what Europe should be aiming for.

 

[Austriantrain]

I would define a true high speed rail network as one that serves every conurbation with more than 1 million people with trains with an average end-to-end speed >250kph. That's what Europe should be aiming for.

Not going to happen. Europe is a very densely populated continent full of medium-sized cities which need connections. It is not China with a number of enormously large conurbations and countryside in between.

I would argue that with regard to climate protection, transferring many of those medium-distance journeys from plane *and* car to rail is vastly more useful than reducing the number of Paris - Berlin flights slightly.

 

[quantinghome]

Not going to happen. Europe is a very densely populated continent full of medium-sized cities which need connections. It is not China with a number of enormously large conurbations and countryside in between.

I'd like to see that backed up with some proper data. China has more mega-cities but also plenty of medium-sized cities as well. Looking at population density maps there doesn't seem to be much difference between the area passed through between Beijing and Shanghai, compared to Paris-Berlin.

I would argue that with regard to climate protection, transferring many of those medium-distance journeys from plane *and* car to rail is vastly more useful than reducing the number of Paris - Berlin flights slightly.

A 4 hour journey between Paris and Berlin (or any other pair of large European cities) would of course benefit the medium-distance journeys in between e.g. Brussels-Cologne. And I'd be willing to curtail flights on routes where there is a decent high speed rail alternative. No reason why we can't target both, of course.

 

[Gostav]

There's a cautionary tale about Chinese construction methods in the Balkans, although it's about a road not a railway.
China was contracted to build a new highway in Montenegro, and the first 40km is ready - but Montenegro can't afford to pay for it.
If they fail to pay, China has the right to demand payment in kind, by acquiring land to the value of the road.
There's probably corruption on both sides, and some murky "great game" politics going on.
Montenegro expects the EU to bail it out, despite not being a member.
How A Chinese-Built Highway Drove Montenegro Deep Into Debt : NPR


Montenegro's population is about the same as that of Sheffield.

If you take look on the Eastern Europe, you will find almost all major business are now controlled by Westerners (especially Germans) in the name of "help to development" in past 20 years.

 

[Austriantrain]

I'd like to see that backed up with some proper data. China has more mega-cities but also plenty of medium-sized cities as well. Looking at population density maps there doesn't seem to be much difference between the area passed through between Beijing and Shanghai, compared to Paris-Berlin.

Point taken, even though I am not sure the „in between“ in China has the relative economic importance compared to the mega-cities it has in Europe. And I don’t think it changes anything anyhow. Europe doesn’t have the kind of mega-cities that justify an HSL Network entirely for those. And we don’t have the politics either to treat anything in between to a second-class network (and bulldoze through it).

The Paris - Marseille HSL you mentioned as an example is entirely a consequence of the huge size of Paris compared to everywhere else in France; you rarely find this elsewhere in Europe.

A 4 hour journey between Paris and Berlin (or any other pair of large European cities) would of course benefit the medium-distance journeys in between e.g. Brussels-Cologne. And I'd be willing to curtail flights on routes where there is a decent high speed rail alternative. No reason why we can't target both, of course.

Yeah, I am definitely looking forward to the time where Germans will agree to bypass their 300.000-500.000-sized cities. As I said, not going to happen, for good reason, since there would be very few cities left to stop in. Or if it does happen, it will be the other way round - a Paris - Berlin HSL will be a succession of separate lines between hubs; with at some point, maybe interconnecting lines built around these hubs to connect those HSL and achieve short overall journey times (eg you could, in theory, at some point build a Brussels - Anvers HSL and a Rotterdam bypass to achieve the kind of journey time between Brussels and Amsterdam you would like to see. I don’t believe it will happen, though, and there is no real point either - Paris-Amsterdam is fast enough, London-Amsterdam is hampered by other factors, and Rotterdam is a very important destination in itself).

Still, I do not think the Chinese HSL network has anything to teach to Europe. The vast majority of journeys in Europe do not take place between cities such as Paris and Berlin; these are really a niche, and this is why those kinds of HSL do not get built (first).

Germany in particular, with Deutschlandtakt, has chosen a different way (and the better one, IMO).

 

[quantinghome]

Or if it does happen, it will be the other way round - a Paris - Berlin HSL will be a succession of separate lines between hubs; with at some point, maybe interconnecting lines built around these hubs to connect those HSL and achieve short overall journey times

I think that's probably how it would happen, if it does happen. Expanding on the existing sections of HSL would be the obvious way to go. Nothing to stop the design having interconnectors around the hubs planned from the start.

 

[Austriantrain]

Nothing to stop the design having interconnectors around the hubs planned from the start.

I agree with you on that.

 

[LOL The Irony]

What exactly would be the difference between a "Chinese-style" high speed rail network" and the high speed rail network that Europe already has ?

I guess it'll be used to try and further pretend you are one nation whilst being made from sub-par materials who's use causes deadly accidents? (Tongue firmly in cheek)

On a more serious note, he probably means Germany (because of their sorry excuse for a HSR "network") but using Europe makes more headlines and taking a jab at DB may not be the best optics.

 

[Austriantrain]

On a more serious note, he probably means Germany (because of their sorry excuse for a HSR "network")

I agree that the Germans could have been quicker in building HS lines (but well, tongue-in-cheek, they still have managed vastly more than the UK…), but what would be your ideal network in addition to everything that has been built, is currently being built or is planned?

 

[LOL The Irony]

but what would be your ideal network in addition to everything that has been built, is currently being built or is planned?

Getting rid of the gaps in HSR lines that cause the network to be disjointed. Paris to Marseille is over and done with in 3 hours, Hamburg to Stuttgart takes 5 hours and that needs to improve.