Shin-kansen: Japanese High-Speed Trains!

"The oldest and busiest Shinkansen corridor - Central Japan Railway's 550km Tokaido line, which connects Tokyo with the western city of Osaka - carries 400,000 passengers a day and has run since 1964 without a fatal accident. The average delay last year was 36 seconds, with most of that caused by typhoons."

The Financial Times talks about the Japanese Shin-kansen in "Tokyo bites hte bullet on Shinkansen" here becoming available to the world after close to five decades in use.  Great competition for the likes of Chinese and German train manufacturers.

Trend In-Motion: Future of Transportation

Excellent articles in the Financial Times today on high-speed rail. In "China on track to be world's biggest network" here, the newspaper writes about the future being bleak for the Chinese airline industry while China continues to spend on building new and redo existing airports. Yet, the thing the Chinese airline industry has to focus on is the consumer aspects and why they would choose rail over air:

"Flights in China are almost always delayed and passengers must arrive early so that they can pass through rigorous security checks.

Once on the aircraft, the service is perfunctory, the toilets often filthy and the food barely edible.

In contrast, China's shiny new high-speed trains are clean, fast, smooth and almost always on time. There are no excess baggage fees for heavy luggage, security checks are perfunctory and passengers can use their mobile phones."

I believe, if the US ends up being serious about high-speed rail, it will face the same concern as above.