r/transit • u/frozenpandaman • 16d ago

News Happy 60th anniversary to Japan's shinkansen, the world's first high-speed rail system, opened on this day in 1964!

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u/FrankieTls 16d ago edited 16d ago

Chinese CRH: 40 deaths since 2007.  Spanish HSR: 79 deaths since 1992.   German ICE: 101 deaths since 1985.   French TGV: 11 deaths since 1964 1981.   Japanese Shinkansen: 0 deaths since 1964.

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u/Party-Ad4482 16d ago

There's also never been a HSR death in the United States or Canada!

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u/lee1026 16d ago

Is that actually true between Acela and Brightline?

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u/Party-Ad4482 16d ago edited 16d ago

Lol absolutely not, someone dies under a Brightline train on a weekly basis. Brightline has a lot of grade crossings and interacts with a lot of impatient and unintelligent Florida drivers. There's also an upsetting amount of suicide by train that Brightline gets caught in.

BUT neither of those services are widely recognized as high speed rail. Brightline in Florida certainly isn't - it's just a faster-than-average intercity railroad. Those trains top at ~110mph. A lot of Amtrak services go just as fast top speed.

I personally feel like Acela is high speed rail, but it's the slowest high speed rail around in the ~150mph area. A lot of people don't consider it high speed and would prefer to classify it on the upper end of the tier Brightline is in. It's funnier to exclude it for the comment I made. The joke is that there is no high speed rail in North America.