WILL THERE BE TRAINS IN OUR FUTURE? - All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide - page 254

now busy expanding and updating them. The rest are planning
and building high-speed rails as fast as they can.
High-speed rail technology was developed in Japan where the
Shinkansen , or “bullet train,” began operating in 1964. The fi rst
trains ran at 125 miles per hour along a 320-mile route between
Tokyo and Osaka. That original system has since been expanded
to more than 1,500 miles and now carries passengers at speeds
of up to 187 miles per hour. Since its inauguration more than 45
years ago, the Japanese high-speed system has carried more than 7
billion people in near-perfect safety. The single fatality was caused
by a malfunctioning door that closed on a passenger. In 2003,
some 160,000 individual Shinkansen trips were reviewed, and the
average arrival time came within six seconds of the actual sched-
uled times. How's that for pretty good on-time performance!
The French have become the acknowledged leaders when it
comes to high-speed rail. The famous TGV ( train à grande vitesse ,
or “high-speed train”) now routinely operates at speeds of 187
miles per hour, with trains running as close as ten minutes apart
during busiest times. A year or so ago, a specially modifi ed TGV
was offi cially clocked at just more than 357 miles an hour. But
even at “only” 187 miles an hour, a ride on the TGV is quite
remarkable: smooth, quiet, and without any real sensation of
traveling at such speed. On-time performance is 98 percent, so the
French are pretty good at punctuality too. A few years ago, I had
a TGV itinerary that included a three-minute connection in Dijon.
When our inbound train came to a stop at the Dijon station, the
connecting train was right there on the adjacent platform. We
made our three-minute connection with two minutes to spare.
High-speed trains are also running in Germany, Great Brit-
ain, Spain, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and others, all at speeds
comparable to the French TGV. New high-speed rail lines are
being planned in Portugal, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Taiwan, Viet-
nam, Australia . . . almost everywhere.