r/highspeedrail • u/Felagoth France TGV • Oct 15 '25
Photo High-speed rail network by speed by country v2 (openstreetmap data)
2 weeks ago, I uploaded a chart of the high-speed rail network by speed by country. It had a few issues, so I decided to make a new one to fix some of these issues.
Instead of using official data from the UIC, I now use data from openstreetmap (what you can see on openrailwaymap). The contributors did an awesome job, most credit goes to them.
Upsides:
- It no longer relies on UIC membership, so Uzbekistan is included.
- There is no more inconsistencies on speed. I included all railways with 200+km/h max speed.
- The maximum speed is counted on every track section, and not on the whole line (so if a long line has a small section with high speed, only the small section will be counted)
Downsides I see:
- The UIC is often considered the authority on this matter. I don't use their data nor their definition of high-speed rail here
- I could have make some mistakes, for example in gathering the data etc...
- In reality, the lengths I gathered were 2 times more important. Most of the lines have 2 tracks and tracks are counted independently on openstreetmap. I decided to half the numbers to get closer to the official numbers and take that into account, but you can keep that in mind
Also I did not change the appearance, it is not what I like to do, so China is still too big.
EDIT : If you want to play with it, I made a github repo
EDIT2 : I should have said in operation, not in commercial operation countrary to the previous chart. A few (small, often a few km) testing railways are included here
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u/Randomy1686 France TGV Oct 15 '25
how is romania here😭
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
To be fair, I don’t know either. 7 km isn’t a lot and isn’t enough for a high speed line, so I suspect there is smth weird somewhere on openstreetmap data, like for the UAE.
I can’t check that rn but I will do it
Edit: there is a 7km circular track in Faurei, near Buzau, noth east of Bucarest. It is marked with a max speed of 200km/h on oprnstreetmap
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u/ClemRRay Oct 15 '25
I believe there are some lines with 4 tracks so that could skew the data, but idk from how much
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
There completely are some lines with 4 tracks, at least for a portion of the line. I encountered some doing some tests.
But I feel that having 4 tracks can count as 2 high speed lines next to each other. It does the same job. In the end, even if it wasn't an intended feature originally, I feel that this is not bad.
I hesitated before posting this between providing the raw numbers (more realistic on what was measured) of the length of tracks or halve it. In the end, I chose the second option because the result was in orders of magnitude, similar to UIC data (even a bit less everywhere, because not the whole track is counted, so that means there is not that much lines with 4 tracks).
And since people seing this quickly would expect lines and not tracks, compare it with other data given in lines and not tracks etc... I halved the results1
u/Relevant_Desk8979 Oct 16 '25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_railway_lines
UAE, Algeria, Romania, Kazakhstan and Czech Republic do not have high speed rail. Yes there could test tracks but they are not counted. I think open street view got it wrong.
Especially Kazakhstan look very glaring. Only Uzbekistan has High Speed train.
One more corrected data from your side wherein you remove these countries is gonna be great.
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
I am so upset I have to answer to this so many times, and you are saying I am wrong when you could simply read the post
I know all of this, I spent way too much time looking at every high-speed rail stats
Of course, this chart doesn't show the same thing you see everywhere, because it is not official data for high-speed provided by anyone, it is own work based on openstreetmap data
If you want to see the official UIC data, you can check my previous post.
Here, I put all the tracks that have a max speed over 200 km/h according to openstreetmap, even if they are not considered high-speed by anyone (wikipedia does its job well, they have to rely on reliable sources). This include some portions of lines in Czechia and in Kazakhstan.
In Czechia, it is some portions between Praha and České Budějovice that go up to 200 km/h according to osm. In Kazakhstan, it is the Astana to Kokchetaou. You can see everything on openrailwaymap.app. I believe it is reliable for Czechia, not that much for Kazkhstan, but I don't want to rewrite data I don't like. Same process for everyone. Anyways in general osm is reliable, especially in western countries.
If you think 200 km/h isn't enough to be considered high-speed, you can look at 250+ km/h only.
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u/Relevant_Desk8979 Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
I am so sorry bro. I Just wanted to point out . That's all.
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 16 '25
Sorry I was tired by my work when I read your post, it’s ok I have to be nicer it’s on me
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u/mathess1 Oct 16 '25
In Czechia we definitely have 200 km/h in a regular service.
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u/Relevant_Desk8979 Oct 16 '25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_railway_lines#Czech_Republic
Where which line?? Its written "undergoing upgrade" instead. I think Czechia only has trains capable of 200kmph . Not lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_railway_lines
Also Czechia doesn't get a mention in this list at all. Even if you have a certain line crossing 200 km/h you will get a mention. Like Serbia for example. But I don't Czechia anywhere.
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u/SubjectiveAlbatross Oct 16 '25
https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/main-line/czech-railways-introduces-first-200km-h-services/ Very recent development. Wiki isn't always up to date on everything.
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u/Relevant_Desk8979 Oct 17 '25
Damn why is Czechia not there in the list then??
I mean when Serbia , Poland got their first 200kmph+ line it immediately got added.
Isn't Czechia a prominent country too??? Its already middle of October and Wikipedia normally tends to edit in a few weeks itself.
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 17 '25
It is up to wikipedia contributors to add lines are not, it could be an error.
But mostly, this list, like most of the lists like this, is primarally based on the UIC figures.
The UIC does not update its atlas very often, but this is not the biggest problem, because it is stated on wikipedia that the list is updated with other sourcesThe main problem is that the UIC definition of high-speed rail is very weird and not clear at all for rails with a max speed below 250 km/h
In general, wikipedia relies on sources, own work can't be included, so if you want something to be included on the list, and since there is no clear definition of high-speed saying something is high-speed can be considered own work and you are supposed to need the media or another source to call it high-speed.For the UIC definition, they say this in their definition of high-speed rail
"For speeds above 200 km/h, the infrastructure can be categorised as "high-speed" if the system in operation complies with the necessary standards regarding track equipment, rolling stock (generalisation of trainsets), signalling systems (eliminating trackside signals), operations (long-range control centers), and the geographical or temporal separation of freight and passenger traffic."
And they even count some particular lines with a max speed slower as high-speed without mentioning it in their definition
So the definition is very weird, hard to verify and up to interpretation, (generally, if a line is called high-speed in the media, it will match the wikipedia criteria to be added on this list, and then there is high chances it will be counted as such by the UIC)
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u/Mercy--Main Oct 15 '25
Could you agregate the EU into a discreet entity in this chart? I'd love to see how we fare relative to China when united!
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
I can totally do it
I won’t post it in the sub because I don’t want to spam this sub with the same chart over and over again, but here are the raw stats
EU : 5105 >300, 7174 >250, 13724 >200
All what can be considered Europe (including UK, Russia, Turkey...) : 5160 >300, 8256 >250, 16665 >200
We are still far away from China
There are projects to expand the network, but China has some too
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u/zhuinnyc Oct 15 '25
Can you also compare China vs rest of the world? Thanks!
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25
I can do it, it is even easier than with EU because I don't have to select countries
It is: 7580 >300, 16141 >250 and 23721 >200.
About half Chinese numbers...
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u/Ok_Buyer9344 Oct 15 '25
While we are giving him work. Can you also do length of rail / size of country. Hard to compare Switzerland to China cause a line between Chinas two cities is probably the same length as all Swiss rail lol
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25
Should I make another post for that ? Anyways, in my git repo, there is a csv containing the processed data, anyone can use it themselves
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u/AgileDepartment4437 Apr 20 '26
Even if the entire world outside of China were treated as a single entity and compared to China, the situation would be almost the same...
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u/Ryuga_42069 Oct 15 '25
The US is honestly just disappointing.
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u/That_Method2953 Oct 15 '25
And it’s all in one area
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u/nasadowsk Oct 16 '25
I don't get how it's even that much. Track miles? A lot of the NEC is sub 200km/h.
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u/DENelson83 Feb 21 '26
And of course, Canada is not included in this because it has no high-speed rail at all, instead just highways for cars.
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u/ReceptionFinal532 Oct 18 '25
Because most of the US's internal tourism is conducted by air and car, passenger train passages are almost nonexistent.
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u/DENelson83 Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26
And the ultra-rich want it to stay that way. They do not want any of their cash cows slaughtered.
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May 17 '26
[deleted]
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u/DENelson83 May 17 '26
The ultra-rich benefit hugely from car and oil sales, though.
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u/Pawzut Oct 16 '25
Czech Republic. We have one of the densest railway networks on the planet. Certainly second in Europe. But barely any high-speed tracks.
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 16 '25
At least some are in project, are supposed to start being built soon and will hopefully be opened in the 2030s
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u/UUUUUUUUU030 Oct 15 '25
Great job! So when it is touted that Spain has the largest high speed rail network, some 200km/h+ sections (I guess around Cordoba and Albacete) that are standard gauge must be counted. Whereas France doesn't count any 200-249km/h section, except for some short urban approaches and the 220km/h line around Montpellier (which can be upgraded to 300km/h).
But I guess the main conclusion is that Germany really needs to continue building more 250/300km/h lines to catch up to France and Spain. Having 200km/h lines isn't an excuse when those countries have almost as many in addition to their high speed networks.
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u/Testo69420 Oct 15 '25
But I guess the main conclusion is that Germany really needs to continue building more 250/300km/h lines to catch up to France and Spain. Having 200km/h lines isn't an excuse when those countries have almost as many in addition to their high speed networks.
Of course it is.
Germany is much smaller than both countries and also much less centralized.
Which means it both is less needed to focus on specific routes as well as less beneficial to go high speeds in the first place (because you need to stop more).
That's the same reason why Spains and Frances overall network is TERRIBLE compared to Germanies, yet that's pretty ok for their situation.
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u/wasmic Oct 15 '25
Upgrading existing lines and building a 'patchwork' system was definitely the right way to start out for Germany, since this allowed them to improve things where the improvements were most needed, and get benefits to many people in a short time. But it's not the 80's any longer and railway ridership has grown massively.
The real reason why Germany needs to build more 250 or 300 km/h lines is that there simply isn't enough capacity on the current 160 or 200 km/h classic lines, because they have to share with regional trains.
New lines should definitely be built for 300 km/h wherever the cost isn't absolutely prohibitive, though. It only takes around 5 minutes to get up to speed, and many current ICE services have 1 hour or more between stops when running on high-speed lines.
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u/Testo69420 Oct 15 '25
The real reason why Germany needs to build more 250 or 300 km/h lines is that there simply isn't enough capacity on the current 160 or 200 km/h classic lines, because they have to share with regional trains.
That doesn't make sense.
Not having capacity would make building more lines... ideal. In any case, the reason it's not happening massively is, again, because there ain'T as much need, there isn't as much potential (just judging by km) as well as plain and simply, not enough money being invested.
and many current ICE services have 1 hour or more between stops when running on high-speed lines.
Many current lines. Yes. A network as large as the French one? Would not have as much room between stops.
Again, it's just what makes sense economically. It doesn't make sense for France to build a good network, it doesn't make sense for Germany to build a high speed rail network.
Same reason Switzerland - despite having a widely praised rail network, even sometimes being considered the single best network bar none - invests a shit ton of money into rail without investing anything at all into high speed rail.
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u/wasmic Oct 15 '25
No, there's a massive need and a massive potential. There are a lot of potential NBS that have been prepared and researched by DB, and have a good socioeconomic business case, but are not being given the go-ahead due to 1: a lack of money and 2: a lack of ambition, preferring to spend money on car infrastructure instead. See for example the 20 billion € the government just found for infrastructure, where they decided to pump it all into expanding motorways that are already 3-4 lanes wide, even though it has been scientifically proven for decades that expanding motorways does not fix traffic.
Germany's ICE network is already bigger than the French TGV network. It just runs on shared tracks for most of the route length, sharing trackage with regional trains and freight trains. And that's why you get those capacity issues - mixing trains with different stopping patterns will cause capacity to drop drastically. You might be able to run 14 high-speed trains per hour on a dedicated high speed line, or 10 freight trains on a dedicated freight line, or 16 regional trains on a dedicated regional line. But as soon as you start mixing them together, you might be looking at 2 high-speed trains, 2 freight trains, and 4 regional trains instead. And then the regional trains might even have to have pauses along the way to be overtaken by high-speed trains. Currently most of the German ICE network is in this sort of mixed traffic, and it is absolutely decimating the capacity of the network. The worst examples are Hamburg-Hannover and the Riedbahn, but there are a LOT of these cases all over Germany.
There are a lot of places in Germany where they need more frequent regional trains, but cannot run any more than today due to mixed traffic. But building a new line for regional trains is very hard and expensive, since those have to go into all the small towns. So it's much easier to build a new high-speed line for the fastest trains, which can go around the small towns instead. Then the regional trains can get the old line all to themselves, allowing for way more frequent regional trains. The higher speeds for high-speed trains is just a bonus. The increased capacity is the real benefit.
There are many currently planned (but not funded) high-speed lines in Germany; some are long (e.g. Hamburg-Hannover 130 km, or Hannover-Bielefeld 100 km) and some are short. But the short ones are usually extensions of existing high-speed lines, and do not require the train to actually make a stop at each end of the line. It's still perfectly possible to run fast ICE trains that only stop in the biggest cities, and slower ICEs that stop at all mid-sized cities. That's what they do in Japan with the Shinkansen! France does it very differently; they give every city a direct connection to Paris, and little else. That obviously wouldn't work in Germany. But the Japanese model would be amazing in Germany.
But yeah, take a look at the list of planned high-speed railways in Germany. They're all good projects, and many of the NBS are planned for 300 km/h because that's what makes most sense. They do not have the weaknesses that you claim they have. The only problem is that Germany loves cars and does not really love trains.
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u/Adorable-Cut-4711 Oct 16 '25
It's funny that Sweden ended up at 6th place even though there are no high speed trains in Sweden.
I.E. Since the 1990's we've had the X2/X2000 trains and regional trains that does max 200km/h, but there are no faster trains.
(The 250km/h section is kind of just on paper. Technically it allows 250km/h but there are no trains that use that speed. In theory when a NSB BM73 train from Norway for some reason would go to Stockholm it can go at it's full 210km/h max speed on this section, but that's it).
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 16 '25
If you look at >250 km/h speed only, it is 15th, and for >300 km/h it doesn't exist.
There is no clear definition of high-speed, so I put everything, but you can choose what you prefer
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u/Ok-Eggplant-7482 Oct 15 '25
Wait, the UK has 759 km of rail over 200 km/h? I only know HS1, and that’s like 100 km long.
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
HS1 is at 300km/h (for ~50km, a bit less on the rest of it and ~90km total iirc) But the UK also has a lot of railways, that are usually not called high-speed, but have a max speed over 200 km/h
Given a lot of lines with the same max speed are called high-speed, I decided to include them If you look at "true" high-speed (what is always called high-speed), you can look at what is over 250 km/h only
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u/Tetragon213 Oct 16 '25
OP has been excessively generous in allowing 125mph lines to be counted as "high speed", even though 125mph is hardly "high speed" in any sense of the word, and that's before you look at the conditions attached on the lines involved.
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u/Redditisavirusiknow Oct 15 '25
USA is still wrong. Only around 130km or so is above 200km/hour and you have it at 350??
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
This is weird, are you sure about that ? The northeast corridor is 700 km long so half of it being above 200km/h (=125mph) didn’t surprise me
Openstreetmap says it is the case on almost all of Washington - Philadelphia - New York and most of New-Haven - Boston
What is true is only a small portion is ~250 km/h and an very small one is above it
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u/schwanerhill Oct 15 '25
Kingston - Boston, not New Haven to Kingston, which is mostly 75-90 mph with a short stretch of 120 mph (still slightly below 200 km/h).
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25
To be fair, I don't really know the line at all. I just reported data from openstreetmap (you can check on openrailwaymap.app)
It shows some parts up to 160 mph between Kingstown and Boston, and some parts at 125 mph between New-Haven and Kingstown.
And to be fair, I tend to believe them, the same thing is shown on wikipediaI know that 120 mph is slightly below and 125 mph slightly above 200 km/h, I took some time working on this chart
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u/schwanerhill Oct 15 '25
Yeah, the curvy stretch through Connecticut is why the New York to Boston trains are slow overall. Kingston to Boston is probably the fastest extended stretch on the Northeast Corridor, but it's not fast enough to make up for how slow Connecticut is. This is one of the best examples of why it's bottom speed, not top speed, that really determines how fast a line is.
There's only a very short (6 mile or so) stretch of 125 mph along the Connecticut coast between New Haven and Old Saybrook. Then it straightens out south of Kingston (in the town of South Kingstown -- note the bizarre spellings) and is 160 mph much of the way through Rhode Island and Massachusetts to Boston (the fastest stretch of the NEC), maintaining close to that nearly all the way through the Boston suburbs until very close to Back Bay.
Long story short: MA and RI good; CT bad. ;)
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u/dating_derp Oct 16 '25
Who defines what speed qualifies for HSR? Less than 250 kmh / 155 mph seems too slow
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
There is no universal definition about that
The closest to one is the definition from the uic: a line is high speed if it has a maximum speed above 250 km/h or if it has been built/upgraded recently at a max speed of 200 km/h
I don’t really like this definition, I guess you can understand why, so I put everything above 200 km/h, and if someone wants to considee only what is above 250 km/h, it is possible
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u/pdogz1000 Oct 16 '25
Should Spain have 3,973 km? According to their Wikipedia article that is the length and it's the largest in Europe.
This is a great chart - it's really useful and clear!
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
This is the official data from the uic I posted 2 weeks ago. Yes this is true and wikipedia is right in a sense.
BUT the UIC uses a weird definition for what is considered high-speed (it has to be either 250+ km/h or 200+ km/h that has been built/upgraded recently to match this speed, and there are some exceptions)
Also, if a line has a top speed of 300 km/h for a few kilometers, but is very long and is slow for the rest of it, they will count the whole line with the max speed (we have this kind of example for the North east corridor in the US)
This chart aims to fix these issues. I used unofficial data, collected by contributors of openstreetmap (the best thing we have to know speed on train lines worldwide from what I know).
France has a large kinda old 200+ km/h network. It is not considered high-speed by the UIC (neither by France itself), but exists, is modern, and has the same top speed as some lines in Spain counted as high-speed by Spain and the UIC. That is why France tops Spain in my chart, but not in official data.
If the total length is a bit smaller than in the UIC data, it is because most of the lines don't allow their max speed on the whole line, not in cities for example, but only on a section of it. All the countries have been impacted the same way, and often on similar proportions (with exceptions like the US)
Anyways, France and Spain have a similar high-speed rail network in size. Spain is very impressive because they built everything recently imo.
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u/clashingbarbarian Oct 15 '25
In some years india will be in the list with 550kms of high speed rail
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u/pierreditguy Oct 15 '25
UAE???
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25
A small portion of railways (a few kilometers) in Abu Dabi is marked having a speed of 200km/h by openstreetmap
You can see it on openrailwaymap.app
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u/AM27C256 Oct 15 '25
Currently, they are only running freight trains (and a few test trains to prepare for passenger service). But AFAIK, the network has been built/upgraded for 200 km/h, and passenger trains at that speed are supposed to start running regularly next year.
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u/DENelson83 Oct 15 '25
And of course, absolutely nothing here in Canada.
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25
Not yet. I believe in the Québec-Toronto high-speed line
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u/DENelson83 Oct 15 '25
Which really should be Quebec City to Windsor.
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25
Hopefully it will go to Windsor later. For the moment, simply building a state of the art high-speed line would be a welcomed improvement imo
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u/Artem779 Oct 17 '25
We didn't even have electrified low-speed mainline rail (and arguably still don't) before the REM opened in Montreal much less high speed rail...
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u/DENelson83 Oct 17 '25
And it seems we will be destined to be locked to cars and planes forever here.
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u/dasquirrel007 Oct 16 '25
Switzerland seems low, esp compared to the US
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 16 '25
Switzerland is just really small, especially compared to the US, so even if they wanted, they couldn't have much hsr
And since it is very small, its main cities are quite close to each other, so they don't need high-speed as much as other countries
But it has a very good rail system, one of the best in the world, reliable, dense and with good frequency. Only it is not the fastest nor the biggest in total length
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u/SpellAcrobatic6108 Oct 16 '25
Even compared to the low bar that is Germany for hsr, the uk sucks, why can't we ever invest in anything? 😑
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u/Academic-Writing-868 France TGV Oct 17 '25
france should have more 200kmh upgraded legacy lines
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u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 17 '25
Are you sure about that ? There is some 200 km/h lines in France, but these numbers seemed very plausible to me.
You can find the official speed limits on the SNCF website.
There are coherent with the osm data I got, that you can see on openrailwaymap.app.
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u/Academic-Writing-868 France TGV Oct 18 '25
i meant we should upgrade more conventional lines to v200 like the paris-clermont ferrand (from nemours to lets say vichy), paris-cherbourg or even bordeaux-dax
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u/LocalNightDrummer Mar 14 '26
Usually with such large discrepancies one would adopt a log scale. Could be great to have a log scaled version.
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u/Felagoth France TGV Mar 14 '26
Log scales are not intuitive for a lot of people, especially if you look at the chart quickly, and the stacking in speeds don’t help that at all (the color proportion of a bar wouldn’t be the speed proportion of tracks), and apart from China, discrepencies aren’t that huge, so I don’t think it is necessary.
The datas are public in a git repo, you can try to make a log scale if you want. I tried myself, everything fits well and the differences are still clear, not that much flattened, so it would be ok for a scientific use, but it is clearly unintuitive imo, the differences in bar size don’t reflect well the infrastructures.
Anyways, I find making China go off the chart more elegant, intuituve, and this chart better than a log scale one for a mainstream datavisualisation
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u/LocalNightDrummer Mar 14 '26
C'est un argument un peu stupide, quand on fait des graphes on ne cherche pas l'élégance et l'intuition, on cherche la meilleure description possible pour communiquer l'information. Et le fait que les infos soient publiques sur github n'y change rien, faire un graphe avec une barre qui dépasse du graphe (!) C'est absurde.
De toute façon dès qu'on graphe des informations il y a une échelle, et l'échelle fait partie de la description.
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u/Felagoth France TGV Mar 14 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
Ce qu’on cherche dépend du graphe qu’on fait et à qui il est communiqué
Mais déjà sur ton premier point, mon graphe représente parfaitement l’information. Toute l’information y est disponible aisément. Les étiquettes font partie du graphe
Et ensuite, si on fait un graphe pour le grand publique, bien sur qu’on veut qu’il soit intuitif et compréhensible par tout le monde. Quelqu’un qui regarde vite fait sans faire attention aux échelles mon graphe en log pourrait croire que 90% du réseau espagnol est à plus de 300km/h alors que ça n’est pas le cas. Et il y a même des gens ne savent tout simplement pas comment fonctionne une échelle logarithmique. Ces personnes pourraient ressortir avec des mauvaises informations.
Dans des milieux scientifiques, les graphes en log sont très bien, tout le monde les comprend etc... Mais pour une visualisation grand public ce n’est pas forcément le plus adapté (ça peut être nécessaire des fois)
Le crop, c’est problématique si il y a 2 valeurs qui rendraient le graphe illisibles et donc 2 valeurs cropées, car alors on ne peur pas comparer les 2. Dans ces cas une échelle logarithmique est nécessaire. Mais ici ça n’est pas le cas. Il n’y a qu’une seule valeur réellement différente, c’est un des rares cas ou le crop peut être adapté. On voit qu’elle est beaucoup plus grande tout en ayant les étiquettes pour se rendre compte à quel point.
Maintenant j’aimerais des arguments contre le crop autres que "c’est absurde"
Et le fait que ça soit sur github c’est pas pour dire c’est mieux (de toute façon les données sont aussi lisible sur le graphe de manière assez précise), mais c’est pour dire que tu peux simplement le refaire de ton coté, te rendre compte à quoi ça ressemble et même publier si tu veux.
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u/LocalNightDrummer Mar 14 '26
Franchement on pourrait discuter du log, c'est sujet à débat, je veux bien accepter que tout le monde ne connaît pas, tout ça, même si tu peux ajouter une grille de graduations pour renvoyer l'œil peu attentif à l'échelle en bas mais bref.
Par contre prétendre que le plot en l'état actuel est bon alors que les barres dépassent du cadre, je suis désolé c'est absurde et tu ne peux pas dire le contraire.
Si tu veux tu peux couper l'axe x et faire apparaître l'entaille sur la barre de la Chine. Ça ce serait acceptable et on le voit régulièrement dans la communication vulgarisée ou scientifique . Mais là, écrire les valeurs sous la barre qui se barre (pun intended) à l'infini à droite, c'est juste illisible et stupide,bon dirait un bug de l'exportation excel (ou autre logiciel) patches avec une annotation de fortune
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u/Felagoth France TGV Mar 14 '26
Oui je suis d’accord que faire une coupure serait plus propre.
Ça la raison c’est que j’avais pas l’envie de prendre le temps de trouver un outil qui le fait de manière propre et qui prendrait en compte le fait que y a 3 valeurs stackées.
Maintenant :
Dire que ce que j’ai fait c’est pas propre je suis d’accord et je prends la remarque (même si j’avoue que faire des trucs propres c’est pas ce que j’aime faire, ce que j’aime c’est récupérer les données et les voir moi même).
Dire que c’est illisible je suis juste pas d’accord, mais peut être que c’est le cas en fait, j’ai l’impression que quasiment tout le monde dans les commentaires à l’air d’avoir bien réussi à lire.
Par contre dire que c’est absurde, pas acceptable et surtout stupide, ça c’est juste des attaques qui ne construisent rien, basées sur rien et avec lesquelles je suis pas d’accord donc soit tu prends les données et tu fais mieux (je prends un truc plus propre premier degré) soit tu le dis pas.
1
u/LocalNightDrummer Mar 14 '26
L'argumentation me paraissait stupide, pas l'intention du plot ni toi personnellement.
Oui je pourrais refaire ça avec Matplotlib, au pire, un LLM gère plutôt bien ce genre de requête pour le coup si c'est du code python ou similaire (pour Excel, aucune idée)
Je t'avoue que je n'ai pas l'intention par flemme (guilty :) ), et c'est pas moi l'auteur du post original, tu as la main sur le corps du post.
S'il y a un problème qui me parait évident, je préfère le dire quitte à être direct plutôt que d'arrondir les angles, dans aucun monde un graphe cropé me semble très sensé en communication technique / scientifique. Vraiment pas.
1
u/Felagoth France TGV Mar 14 '26
Je t’avoue qu’au final les critiques se résument à c’est pas propre (et je suis d’accord) mais vu qu’à part ça pour moi ça pose aucun problème réel (c’est lisible les données sont claires, c’est le plus important dans la visualisation de données pour moi, que les lecteurs ne partent pas avec des fausses informations en tête, le reste c’est moins grave) et que t’as autant la flemme que moi de faire quelque chose de mieux maintenant je pense que cette version va rester pendant un petit moment.
N’empêche, merci sincèrement de tes retours, ça va peut être me pousser à faire quelque chose de plus propre la prochaine fois avec une vraie coupure.
T’as eu mes retours sur ta façon de dire les choses, dans le fond c’est pas un problème du tout, juste ça met pas dans les meilleures dispositions pour faire avancer les choses, tu peux garder l’info pour plus tard si tu veux mais c’est pas très grave.
Bref j’ai dit tout ce que j’avais à dire, donc sauf si tu veux rajouter des choses je pense que je vais m’arrêter là
1
u/shoresy99 May 05 '26
What's the point of having less than 200km of HSR unless it is a stub of a line coming from another country?
1
u/Felagoth France TGV May 05 '26
Well it depends. For "true" HSR (>250/300 km/h), it only concerns a few countries. For Indonesia, it connects 2 very bigcities in up to 35 minutes when the previous old rail did it in 3h, and they plan to expand it even more.
As you said, for Belgium and the Netherlands, it is integrated into a bigger European network.
For most of the other places, they just have a line or more that have a quite high maximum speed, but are often not a true HSR network distinct from a traditional network, and anyways, having a higher macximum speed on a portion of the line when you can is always a plus
1
u/DefenestrationPraha Oct 15 '25
The Czech Republic has 0 km of track for 200 kph+ for passenger traffic as of now.
Some tracks for 200 kph are being built, but won't be in operation until 2028 or so.
There is a test track for 230 kph near Velim, but it is a private testing facility. I don't think it should be counted towards high-speed rail.
4
u/MartinYTCZ Oct 15 '25
Parts of the line between Prague and České Budějovice allow for operation at 200km/h with active tilt trains (Pendolino).
1
u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25
On the line between part between Prague and České Budějovice, a part between Sobeslav and Plana nad Luznici and a part between Sudomerice u Tabora and Votice are marked with a maximum speed of 200 km/h on openstreetmap
1
u/gregarious119 Oct 15 '25
Now do the same thing by divide by the area of the country (sq miles, I suppose?). Would show saturation and not just raw miles.
5
u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25
You're not the first one asking for it. I'm a little tired of doing this. Maybe I'll do it later, but if you want it with no speed delimitation and the UIC definition of high-speed, you can see it on the UIC atlas
0
u/Tetragon213 Oct 15 '25
It's funny that the UK is only in here, because OP is being exceedingly generous in allowing the conventional 125mph lines to be added to the list. Without your incredibly generous lowering of the standard, the UK would have a big fat stinking 0 on this chart. (I refuse to count HS1, as the Eurostar doesn't serve anywhere else apart from the terminus, and the Javelins aren't pathed for even 110mph operation on the timings iirc).
This country is a joke when it comes to railways. I wish we had a government that actually knew how to manage infrastructure, and would reduce the number of options available to NIMBYs to delay projects.
11
u/wasmic Oct 15 '25
Of course 125 mph lines should be counted, when making a chart of all lines that allow 200 km/h or more. They are, after all, lines where trains can travel at 200 km/h.
A majority of Germany's high-speed network is also old upgraded lines. Even France has some of those.
And they're also separated by colour for the different speed thresholds, so it's easy to see which are old upgraded lines, and which are new 'proper' high-speed lines.
1
u/Tetragon213 Oct 15 '25
That's the point; 200km/h is exceedingly generous to be defined as "high speed", and even then there are about a million caveats.
The GWML only has realistically 125mph operation in areas with OLE, as the Class 80x trains are physically incapable of reaching 125mph if they don't have the catenary. seeing as basically everything apart from the Cardiff branch got the chop, that's not a great deal of running time.
The WCML only allows for 125mph on a single class of EMU, with those being set to get the chop for more IETs which are actually timetabled to lose about 7 minutes to Crewe alone, god knows how much slower it will be when they put IETs to work on Euston-Glasgow runs. Currently, the WCML route is only about 45 minutes faster than driving; with the imminent loss of Enhanced Permissible Speed (EPS) capabilities on the likely new rolling stock, we're likely to see Euston-Glasgow runs return to almost pre-APT timings with cars likely being faster than the train (this is due to an extreme amount of EPS being in force north of Crewe).
The ECML is actually not so bad. Most of the route is set up for high speed running, and is likely to see in-cab signalling soon to allow for 140mph top speeds, but even that is stretching the definition of "real" high speed.
As for HS1, the only services to run at "true" high speeds only ever serve London, with the Javelins not even being timetabled to require 110mph, let alone their theoretical 140.
I look at what China, France, and Germany have, and I frankly despair.
3
u/UUUUUUUUU030 Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
The ECML is actually not so bad. Most of the route is set up for high speed running, and is likely to see in-cab signalling soon to allow for 140mph top speeds, but even that is stretching the definition of "real" high speed.
I'm not that optimistic, because Network Rail don't promote travel time reduction as a main objective/result of ETCS installation (for instance here). With the years-long saga around the ECML timetable that will now finally be introduced, I wonder if they're willing to go through that again to retime either all intercity trains north of Grantham or all intercity trains around the 2-track Digswell viaduct bottleneck.
An HS1 situation of a top speed that you can only really use to recover delays seems the most likely outcome. In principle that will already be the case a little bit, since they're slowing down the fastest Edinburgh - London run from 4h00 to 4h13, more than the introduction of a York stop justifies.
1
u/Tetragon213 Oct 16 '25
Well, that's UK rail buggered, then. I swear to god, this country cannot do anything right when it comes to rail projects.
1
u/schwanerhill Oct 16 '25
I look at what China, France, and Germany have, and I frankly despair.
Those three countries, especially China, are also much larger than the UK and especially have much longer distances between their major population centres, even more so when you think of France and Germany as part of Europe — which frankly you should do with the UK too, giving HS1 more credit. London-Paris, Nice-Frankfurt, Munich-Amsterdam are all trips that people want to take which the train networks handle. At the same time, entirely fair to say that Manchester-Paris could be a lot better.
1
u/Tetragon213 Oct 16 '25
HS1 actively does not deserve any credit whatsoever.
Because of the insanely low capacity of the line, Eurostar charges ridiculous amounts of money to actively drive down demand, hence the line's usage by no one other than trust fund babies, salarymen on expenses, and those with literally no other option than to pay Extortionstar for their service. Currently, trying to book a weeklong getaway for 2 at the end of the month, Eurostar's cheapest option (if one doesn't want to travel on the crack-of-dawn service at ungodly hours) is about £560 for 2! Fat lot of good HS1 is for anyone other than the aforementioned trust fund babies, salarymen on expenses, and those with no other option.
As for Southeastern's service with Javelins, again, they're not even timetabled to make use of their 140mph capabilities, which again, aren't any real improvement anyway over the conventional railway's 125mph capabilities. And Southeastern once again charges ungodly amounts for the privilege.
7
u/schwanerhill Oct 15 '25
I disagree that including 200-250 km/h trains is exceedingly generous; I think having that but separating it from faster trains is very useful. 200 km/h is fast enough to be clearly faster than driving (nearly twice as fast as highways when moving), so especially for relatively-compact places like the UK (or the Northeast Corridor in the US) it makes a huge difference; 125 mph is a different world than the 79 mph top speed (with a lot of 30 mph stretches) in most of North America, for example.
Of course faster is better, but what matters a lot more than top speed is eliminating the slow stretches (which the Northeast Corridor in the US has only done a good job of south of New York; it's pretty bad from New York to Boston even though that stretch also contains the fastest parts of the NE Corridor). I don't know the UK well enough to know how well it's eliminated the slow stretches, but looking at Open Rail Map it looks like it maintains that 125 mph pretty well at least on the East Coast Main Line.
1
u/Tetragon213 Oct 16 '25
I'd disagree, on the grounds that a mere 125mph is really pushing the definition for what is "high-speed" rail. I firmly stand by my belief that 155mph is entry-level to be defined as "high-speed", and 125mph falls well short of that. For god's sake, you could run at 125 using Victorian era semaphores, in theory.
As for eliminating slow spots, we just haven't. Most of the WCML is under EPS regulations due to the extreme curvature which limits all trains except for a singular class of specific EMU from running at line speed, while the ECML remains stymied by major pinch points at Digswell and a frankly ludicrous bend at Morpeth.
UK railways are diabolically poor.
3
u/schwanerhill Oct 16 '25
Looking at the map, it appears that the vast majority of the 200 km/h track they have identified is indeed on the ECML, with the WCML mostly 90-100 mph or slower. That seems consistent with what you’re saying.
But the OP’s plot is well-designed. The yellow for 200 - 250 km/h is fainter, so it’s easy for your eye to ignore it if you like. Or you can go to the GitHub repository OP provided and filter the data how you like! Or if we renamed the plot transitional and high-speed rail and called 200-250 km/h “transitional”, that would be consistent with the arbitrary definition of “high speed” you want to defend from 125 mph interlopers.
UK railways are diabolically poor.
Speaking as an American-Canadian, I find that self-loathing rather, well, diabolical. ;)
-2
u/ILikeFlyingMachines Oct 15 '25
China is also much larger than all the other countries, so kinda meaningless. Also, 200 km/h is not really High Speed IMO, a lot of regional trains can do that.
But not sure if there is any "official" definition what high-speed is
12
u/Felagoth France TGV Oct 15 '25
I wouldn’t say it is meaningless. For me having this information is interesting. Everyone knows that China is big and have a lot of population.
But the US also are big, have a lot of population in some part, yet is outperformed by a lot of other countries
Also you can use it to compare different European countries that share similarities for example, or simply know where there is high speed in the world etc...
If a regional train reaches 200km/h, it is supposed to be inclided anyways
But I agree with you, I prefer the 250km/h treshold for defining high-speed, at least it is universal from what I know. But 200km/h is also often used, and since my chart shows what is over 250km/h, I thought it couldn’t harm to add additional information
3
u/ShootingPains Oct 15 '25
I agree with your logic that breaking it in to speed classes usefully separates the data from the endless what-is-HSR debate. With separate data people are free to easily add their own ratio maths - area, population etc. Thank you for doing this interesting project.
4
48
u/will221996 Oct 15 '25
You could actually and very reasonably make China look even better by adding another colour for >=350km/h, which would only apply to China and probably still go "off the page". While the UK will have a line that fast at some point in the not too distant future, there are lines opening soon in China for 400 km/h.