From today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, in an article appropriately titled Acela: More cannonball than bullet:
Unlike the sleek high-speed trains of Europe and Asia that resemble aluminum birds, the Acela is a steel tank, built to survive collisions in the mixed-use environment of the Northeast Corridor.
“We had to cope with the FRA [Federal Railroad Administration] crash standards,” said Francois Lacote, senior vice president/technical for Alstom Transport, the French train-builder that made the Acela for Amtrak along with Bombardier, a Canadian firm. “It’s much heavier, it’s totally different.”
The 308-passenger Acela weighs 1.2 million pounds, twice as much as Alstom’s 300-passenger, 600,000-pound AGV train.
“If you want to go fast, you need light trains with no curves [on the tracks],” said George Mekosh, product manager for Bombardier Transportation/North America. “And you can’t have a station stop at every congressman’s hometown.”
True high-speed trains run on dedicated tracks, free of conflicts with slower commuter trains and heavier freight trains.
At least some light is shining on insane FRA policies, though I don’t entirely agree with the last sentence.
Its good that people are finally catching on, but if the only solution ends up being pouring tons of new concrete for dedicated tracks everywhere, we arent going to be making very quick progress.
Getting a pic of an ICE passing a freight at 250 km/h on Würzburg-Fulda-Hannover would be even nicer nail in the coffin of “dedicated tracks” argument.