All aboard! Southeast Asia's first high-speed railway

[Menthol]

 

[tower9]

I thought Laos had the first high speed railway?

 

[AViet]

I thought Laos had the first high speed railway?

By commonly accepted international standard, high speed railway means at least 250 km/h.

 

[FuturePAF]

By commonly accepted international standard, high speed railway means at least 250 km/h.

Even so, Laos system is still impressive for a country of its economy and its needs at 160 kmph/100 mph. If it can maintain even 85% of that speed as its average speed, it would be faster then America’s fastest train, the Acela. Hopefully they manage enough tourism and other revenue to pay it off in a reasonable amount of time.

Btw, it’s the kind of system Pakistan is looking to get and is equal and in many ways better then India’s current best train, Vande Bharat, which also has a service top speed of 160 kmph.

For customers, affordability is also key, and these 160 kmph trains will probably have to do for a generation while resources can be better allocated to building up the economy till the countries can enter afford to build and operate true high speed rail.

But I get your point. These trains can at best be called “higher speed” but not true HSR.

China Railway CR200J - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[AViet]

It is clearly a feat for Laos, but it is not a high-speed railway. Far from it.

And currently, the top speed of Malaysia railway (the electrified, double tracked trunk line, metre gauge from border with Thailand to Gemas and by 2024, to Singapore) is 160 km per hour. Same to Thailand metre gauge railway after the upgrading is completed.

Vietnam is planning to build the North South railway line (from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh) for both passenger and freight, probably starting 2025, with top speed above 200 km/h but we do not consider it high speed railway.

 

[Indos]

The video is wrong by using the person lives in Karawang, West Java, that commute with cheap train (the way it operates and the quality is already the same like Metro in many European countries) to Jakarta.

The train is cheap, around 10.000 Rupiah from Karawang to Jakarta which is less than 1 USD. He will not use HSR train with around 200.000 Rupiah (ticket price) for his daily commuter activity from West Java into Jakarta. Workers like him will continue using cheap and affordable train instead of HSR.

HSR with that price is only benefiting tourism, people who have families in those cities, and executive workers who have occasionally had meeting between industrial complex in West Java with their company HQ or clients in Jakarta/Bandung.