Technologies

Current problems of high speed rail

High-speed rail (HSR) is a type of rail network utilizing trains that run at speed above 250 km/h (155 mph). High speed rail is a development direction of future transportation. 

But until now, most of the high speed rails in the world lose money. If social effects are not considered, most high-speed railways have never been profitable.  The reason why the high-speed railway loses money is: the high-speed railway is basically a dedicated passenger line, and passenger transport is not easy to make a profit when population density is low. 

However, normal railways are profitable in all countries in the world, because normal railways can also do freight transport of containers, oil, coal, grain, construction materials, equipment, express delivery, etc, although the speed of normal rail is lower. Rail freight is lucrative in both the US (link) and China (link). Both Warren Buffet (link) and Bill Gates (link) heavily invested in rail freight, and they are very profitable. 

Can a good planning or policy be made so that the high speed rail can also do the above-mentioned freight transport like normal railway? No, technology does not allow it because high-speed track cannot support heavy freight trains. 

Improvement and effect of high speed rail 

An innovation team redesigned the shape of the wheel and the relationship with the rail, so that the steel wheels of heavy freight trains will not wear out the rail tread shape optimized for the steel wheels of high speed trains, and thus heavy freight trains and high-speed trains can run on the same rail. For example, high speed passenger trains run during day, while heavy freight trains run during night.  At the same time, it can also make the train turning radius become small, and easily achieve short distance between stations. 

In addition, the project can also obtain the following world-class performance.

1. Heavy freight. The contact stress between the improved steel wheel and rail is small, wearing is light, rail deformation is small, and the service life is long, which are suitable for running heavy freight trains. It is suitable for increasing the number of wheel axles and reducing the axle load.

2. 600 kilometers per hour. This project eliminates the hunting oscillation of the wheel-rail train, greatly improves the running stability of the train. The structure that train embraces track keeps the train from derailing. These relax the requirements for track smoothness. Therefore, it can easily break the world record of 575 kilometers per hour and expect to achieve the speed up to 1300 kilometers per hour.

3. The world's fastest track switch. A large number of high speed track-changing switches facilitate track-changing to form a dense railway network, and realize operation among short distance stations and train overtaking.

4. The world's most superior braking performance and acceleration performance. Trains are safer than the status quo and tend to make frequent stops at stations. Achieve short train interval, double the railway transportation capacity. It is also easier to realize automatic driving without a train driver.

5. The world's smallest turning radius. It is easy to build railways on complex urban and mountains, and it is easy to acquire land.

6. The world's steepest uphill and downhill performance. Easy to build railways in mountains. Dig less tunnels and build less bridges.

7. Trains don’t derail. The vehicles of this project hug the track, and the vehicles will not derail without prior destruction of the track or vehicles. Thus, vehicles are much less affected by storms and earthquakes.

Although the cost of the track of this project may be higher than current track, the difference is not significant. The cost of track construction is basically in land acquisition and civil engineering, and the cost of tracks and vehicles account for a small proportion.

Sustainable profitability

Rail freight transport in all countries in the world is profitable, which makes high speed rail to be not afraid of low population density in the case of USA and the most places in the world. Passenger transport alone can also be profitable if the population density is high.

A world's top class technical team has been doing this development for more than 10 years and the design is in patent pending.