At 296 mph, the scenery starts to blur. A mile disappears every 20 seconds. The whole town blinks before you remember its name.
As the name suggests, high-speed trains are fast. When two people are moving toward each other, they can close the distance at twice their maximum speed. Sixty seconds after they pass, a moment when drivers have little chance to wave amicably, they are six miles apart, each carrying more than 1,000 passengers as they drive relentlessly through the countryside.
This breathtaking speed makes a recent fatal accident between two high-speed trains in Spain even more alarming. Despite their impressive global safety record, the straight-line derailments were a stark reminder of how exceptional and vulnerable these systems are.
So what does it feel like to be responsible for these machines when something goes wrong?
“Driving on a high-speed train is just a different kind of driving,” says Paul Cooper, who has worked as a driver and instructor for 13 years for South Eastern, which runs high-speed trains connecting to London on HS1, a railway built for high-speed trains. Drivers operate with the same reaction time as other train drivers, but “the safety systems are not as forgiving.”
However, rail travel remains one of the safest modes of transport in the world, with far fewer serious accidents and fatalities than road travel. Traveling on high-speed rail is even safer, mainly because of the intensive work being done to build the systems that allow trains to travel at incredible speeds.
A typical high-speed train weighs nearly 500 tons and is an amazing feat of engineering. The compact motor provides approximately 11,000 horsepower (equivalent to the power of 100 family cars), along with multiple power and braking systems. Add in 500 to 600 seats, a cafe car, heating, ventilation, lighting, and countless other components, all kept within strict weight limits, and it becomes more like an F1 car on rails than a commuter train. It’s no surprise that each unit costs approximately $40 million to construct, with millions more spent on maintenance over its normal lifespan.
But high-speed rail has become so common in Europe and Asia since the 1980s that many passengers barely notice it. While people are answering emails, watching movies, and listening to podcasts, few are thinking about the army of engineers, technicians, and maintenance workers who keep trains safe and punctual.
That predictability is part of its appeal. More than 10 billion passengers have traveled on Japan’s Shinkansen since 1964, and the drama-free punctuality of the train has become part of the quiet daily lives of millions of people.
France also introduced the iconic Grand Vitesse Railway (TGV) in 1981. TGVs have helped reduce travel times between major cities, making high-speed travel safe, accessible and affordable. French expertise has also spread to Spain, Belgium, South Korea, the United Kingdom and Morocco, home to Africa’s first high-speed railway.
According to the International Union of Railways, more than 2.5 billion passengers a year now use services that travel at speeds of 150 mph or more. A single high-speed line can move more than 20,000 people per hour in each direction. Even as Covid-19 disrupted global travel, the length of active high-speed routes jumped 40% between 2020 and 2022, from 27,300 miles to 36,580 miles, most of which was in China.
Many high-speed trains, including the TGV and Shinkansen, run at speeds of up to 186 miles per hour, or about 300 kilometers per hour. China’s Fuxing trains will be even faster, reaching speeds of 347 miles per hour on some lines, with plans to reach a top speed of 348 miles per hour. Japan’s next-generation ALFA-X is being tested at similar speeds, but its planned service speed will be closer to 355 miles per hour.
Such speeds are punishing. The forces on the body, wheels, suspension, brakes, and truck components are intense. Very few high-speed trains survive past their 25th birthday. Millions of miles of driving at full tilt takes its toll.
All elements of a high-speed system must work as part of a finely tuned ecosystem. Railroads, bridges, tunnels, and power lines are all under extraordinary stress and require rigorous construction, meticulous inspection, and ongoing maintenance.
Above about 195 mph, trackside signals are no longer visible enough to safely react, so drivers use in-cab systems that continually update speed limits and track conditions. This allows the driver to focus far ahead, which is essential when every second counts.
The average reaction time of a car driver is said to be 0.7 to 1.5 seconds. Years of intensive professional training have reduced the reaction time of train drivers to 0.2 to 0.4 seconds, but fatigue and distraction remain problems. These reflexes, combined with advanced safety systems, make high-speed rail one of the safest forms of transportation in the world.
“Driving at higher speeds also means ‘thinking ahead’ more. The distance between stations is longer, but the higher speeds mean you need to be more aware of what’s going on further away. This can mean a higher level of situational awareness,” Cooper added.
“The increased speed also creates risks in the event of exceptional events. However, the additional training increases the level of understanding and knowledge of emergency procedures, which may differ significantly from traditional networks.”
Any engineer will tell you that accelerating a 500-ton train to 186 miles per hour is easy. It’s really difficult to stop safely.
Modern high-speed trains use multiple braking systems. In addition to disc brakes on the axles, many trains employ regenerative braking. It converts kinetic energy into electricity, which can be fed back to the power grid or used by other trains. Some have powerful electromagnetic track brakes that clamp the rails in an emergency.
At 196 mph, a TGV or Eurostar will stop in about 83 seconds and cover about 1.5 to 2 miles. On Britain’s HS1 line, a 12-car commuter train takes about 45 seconds to stop from 140 mph, covering just under a mile.
The safety system has been developed to provide important information to the driver control desk. The European Rail Traffic Management System is currently being rolled out across the continent and beyond, providing real-time target speeds, brake curve maps and track status information miles ahead, enabling smoother, safer and more energy-efficient operations.
Because high-speed trains run at such frequency and speed, additional precautions are built in. Conventional railways do not allow overpasses with roads, which is a significant hazard. A “flying junction” system that uses elevated lines and separate lines is used to avoid collisions where lines separate and merge. Fences, sensors and CCTV segregate work areas.
“From an infrastructure perspective, dedicated high-speed rail is easier to isolate from surrounding communities and external hazards,” Cooper says.
“Not only is the use of elevated tracks and tunnels increasing, but layers of fencing, sensors and surveillance cameras have been installed. This means that unlike on conventional lines, incidents of trespassing are extremely rare. In the case of HS1, it is a ‘driverless’ railway, meaning track workers do not enter the railway operating area while trains are running, limiting the risk of injury or death.”
This isolation has contributed to high-speed rail’s impressive safety record and helps explain why the recent Spaniard crash in Andalusia, which killed 43 people, shocked the rail industry.
Not a single death has been recorded on Japan’s Shinkansen trains since the first Shinkansen departed from Tokyo Station in 1964. The only fatal TGV accident recorded in France was the derailment of a private test train in 2015.
Accidents remain extremely rare on high-speed private lines.
China’s ambitious network, now more than 31,000 miles long, has had its own set of tragedies. In 2011, a crash near the coastal city of Wenzhou killed 40 passengers and injured nearly 200 others. The disaster shook public confidence, led to slowdowns and halted construction of new lines, but no major accidents have been reported in the 15 years since, even as the network continues to expand.
“High-speed rail’s incredible safety record is built on many factors. Cutting-edge technology and materials are used, setting world-leading standards for fire resistance, crash protection and signaling equipment,” said Christian Walmer, rail historian and author of Fast Track: The Incredible Story of High-Speed Rail.
“But its biggest advantage is that because it uses dedicated track, there is a much lower chance of collisions with colliding or slower trains.
But with more than 70 million high-speed journeys taking place each year around the world, he said, the conditions that led to accidents like the one in Spain were probably inevitable at some point.
Investigators are continuing to work to determine the cause of the January 18 derailment. Initial suspicions focus on the possibility that the rails were damaged. A high-speed maintenance regime is specifically designed to prevent this.
The country’s Transport Minister Oscar Puente called the incident “extremely bizarre.” And while it’s too early to tell what lessons there will be, Walmer says they’re likely to be fundamental, such as the need for more frequent testing.
“No matter what precautions we take and no matter how safe the trains are, we cannot completely ignore external factors such as weather, subsidence or just plain bad luck,” he added.
Spain currently operates Europe’s longest high-speed network at 2,469 miles, second only to China. Europe aims to triple the use of high-speed rail by 2050, a very ambitious goal that will require large-scale and sustained expansion.
For now, millions of passengers continue to rely on the invisible army of drivers, engineers, and technicians who keep high-speed trains running safely. Until proven otherwise, high-speed rail remains the safest and most effective alternative to flying for journeys of up to 700 miles, moving large numbers of people from city center to city center quickly, conveniently and with minimal hassle.
