Talk:High-speed rail
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"Passenger rail service has been seriously downgraded since, due to declining demand". Not true. Demand for passenger rail has INCREASED overall since the WW2, while demand for air and road has increased at a much higher rate. As for the serious downgrade, what exactly do you mean by that? closing of intercity lines? decline in passengers? fewer trains on the timetable? slower trains? where is the evidence? Surely the introduction topics in this article refer to the countries that have notable high speed rail initiative, ie. Japan, Korea, China, Western Europe? I think you'll find that in those countries there has been no such 'severe downgrade'.
Although there are a few exceptions, most high-speed rail projects never set out to be an excercise in running a profitable business. Both high speed and conventional rail are, like it or not, inevitably loss-making, government-subsidised systems whose existence is justified by the claim that their macroeconomic benefits outweigh the microeconomic losses. Using an ambiguous clichee such as "market" for the utilisation of something that has more resemblance to a public service than a to market product is slighlty inadequate and lazy writing. Although the english language seems increasingly infested with business jargon, most people still wouldn't say "market for police officers", "market for pavements" or "market for traffic lights" for instance. I therefore replaced the word, at least in the title, with the slighlty better description "Target areas".
I am moving some MAJOR POV to the talk page. I'll let someone else figure out what to put back and how:
[begin material from page]
The railroads, which had been built with private capital, were not given an equal playing field.
In Europe and Japan, with important conventional rail services, their extension and adaptation to a higher speed technology was a more obvious choice than in the United States, where decisions are dominated by the highway lobby rather than reason.
Other widely cited complaints against the air and highway modes are their externalities: pollution, noise, accidents, etc. Neither air nor highway modes can avoid these.
[end material from page]
Railroads do not make noise? Ever lived near one? Building a highway system was unreasonable? Amtrack is disadvantaged by the government? Come on!
I was also confused by the following sentence: As with its inauguration, the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano Japan are a target for the opening of a rail line extension.
Does this mean that this sentence hasn't been updated since 1998?
Cos111 00:29 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)
It seems to come from Levinson, David. 1995 [!]. Rail Reinvented: A Brief History of High Speed Ground Transportation, http://www.ce.umn.edu/~levinson/papers-pdf/RailReinvented.pdf I updated this line. - Patrick 08:05 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)
This is a great article! Did you write it specially for Wikipedia, Qbmessiah? --Larry Sanger
- Unlike other modes, whose emergence have at least in part been the result of a forceful entrepreneur, rail?s George Stephenson and Peter Cooper, the automobile?s Henry Ford, or the airplanes Orville and Wilbur Wright come immediately to mind, high speed ground transportation has been a product of planning from the central government in Japan, France, and the state governments in the United States.
Who cares whether an "entrepreneur" is involved? Just mention it's the result of central planning and be done with it. Americans are so weird.
I disagree with the above remark. This seems to be a very important difference in the way this technology was developed. I'm sure you'll agree that one cannot discount the importance of entrepreneurs in the development of many technologies; given that, it's notable that (if it's true) entrepreneurs weren't involved in the development of this technology. This has social/political implications, of a sort that ought to be interesting to you, particularly if you don't (ever) care whether entrepreneurs are involved in a project.
--A weird American :-)
You're begging the question. You're assuming that it's notable (ie, important enough to be noticed) that "entrepreneurs" (whatever that Americanism means) weren't involved in the development of high speed trains. And from this you conclude exactly what you're assuming!
Actually, the word "entrepreneur" should be taken out even if for the sole reason that it's an Americanism and a propaganda word for neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism is a POV which should be moded away. If you wish to say that "Neo-liberals think it important that blah blah blah" then go right ahead. At that point, I can leave it to someone else to take it out as completely irrelevant. -- Not an American
Read more carefully; I'm not given to begging questions. Entrepreneurs (http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=entrepreneur) (a French word found in the OED (http://www.entrepreneurs.com/oed.html)) were important in developing very many technologies; that you must not be denying, because it's obviously true. It follows--but arguably, inductively, and non-trivially--from this that it is notable that entrepreneurs were not involved in the development of high speed rail. No "neo-liberal" assumptions are involved here, as far as I can see.
This said, given that you have some objection, and that other left-leaning people would too, adding a qualification would be very apropos (that's another French-sourced word). I think I'll do that.
--An anti-bigot.
This article read like many of my draft articles - full of "moreover", "nevertheless","maybe", "possibly", "however" etc. I quite like that style, but most readers do not! When it comes to the crunch, very little is added by including words like that, though they can work well enough in informal text, or perhaps in speech, though we don't really speak like that, do we?
I think it is often better, have produced the draft including all the words mentioned above, plus a few more, to then go through and fairly ruthlessly prune most of them out. Also many sentences can be split into separate sentences, and while people with complex minds may find that too simplistic, there is evidence that for most people this makes the articles more readable.
I have tried to maintain the same tone, and information as the original, but simply to shorten it, and to make it clearer, without redundant words.
David Martland 18:08 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC)
- Well done! Patrick 21:10 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC)
Duplication
The whole article seems to be duplicated. I'm not sure if there are differences between the two parts, so someone should compare them and fix it. --SPUI 11:04, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)--SPUI 11:04, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Some Technical stuff
- Highspeed rail is in the international technical use defined as something faster than 100 mph (160 km/h). The UIC definition is more suitable for Europe, but not for the rest of the world.
- The dual gauge train in Spain is called Talgo 250
- The Swiss ICN is a very nice, but this is not really a high speed train. It belongs more to the tilting train category like Pendolino or VT 611.
- The new Talgo 350 for Spain is built by Talgo togehter with Bombardier. The design of the power headds is from Switzerland.
- The Acela Express train is not tilting. It was only designed to do so, but it never did in revenew service.
- Hmmmm... I've read that it tilts, but the loading gauge doesn't permit it to tilt as far as had been hoped-for.
- Atlant 16:07, 12 May 2005 (UTC)