Talk:Higher-speed rail

Higher-speed rail was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
November 18, 2014	Good article nominee	Listed
January 7, 2023	Good article reassessment	Delisted

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 26, 2014.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that higher-speed rail is actually a lower train speed category than high-speed rail?

Current status: Delisted good article

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Continental bias

What of existing operations or projects in Asia or Europe? In Germany and Italy there are several lines that are too slow for categorization as high-speed, but are certainly of the speeds referenced in this article.Dogru144 (talk) 18:50, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, not a partucular range of speeds that defines the category of higher-speed rail. Each country has its own way to define it and even that it is not unified within each country. You can see the definitions in the US and Canada have differences including speed ranges. Now, whether Germany and Italy have any specific definitions of "higher-speed rail" is another story. From my understanding is that in Europe, they just don't use this term to separate inter-city trains into these categories. They just simply call them all inter-city trains for all the lines that don't reach the high-speed rail status. I think the difference is that in Europe, they are constantly improving the quality of the train services and the speeds are increased on regular basis. In Asia, they don't bother with increasing speeds of existing lines, but they focus more in building new lines as HSR. In Japan, they build out the "mini" with lower speeds than typical HSR, but the UIC defines those as HSR, so they can't be called higher-speed rail. However, in the US and Canada where the rail is not as up kept as in other places, and they don't have resources or political will to built out the HSR. Then they turn the focus on HrSR. Passenger lines in these countries are heavily shares with freight trains, plus many safety regulations that make it hard to continuously increasing speeds unlike in Europe. So, increasing speeds is a big deal for these countries, and they make a special category for that. I have tried to find sources that would have any references to higher-speed rail in other continents but there is not many.

That being said, Ireland is included in the article because they specifically use the term. If you can find other reliable sources that use this term for those lines in Germany and Italy that you mentioned, you should then add those to the article. Z22 (talk) 07:35, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that the German Intercity with a maximum of 200 km/h (125 mph) is the higher-speed network while the Intercity-Express (max. 320km/h, 200 mph) is the high-speed variant. When I look at it, maybe all Intercity-trains in Europe are HrSR. Most have a noted top speed between 100 and 125 mph, 160 to 200 km/h. The term seems to be very new and since Europe mostly made this development in the 1980 and earlier, it is unlikely to spread. Nevertheless it could be reasonably applied to many current trains. The alternative would be to say that HrSr is just a term for the improvement of lines to a standard comparable to 1980ies standards of the rest of the world. BTW, there are way more safety regulations that make HSR complicated and expensive in Europe, just look at all the predecessors of the European Train Control System. Especially Germany has also the problem with the freight trains that run on the same network, so no excuses for the US, sorry. --Beliar (talk) 20:33, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great info that you provided here. I wasn't trying to give any excuses or anything. I have no information as to why they don't use this term in Europe so I was just giving some of my guesses which could be wrong. My point is very simple. We should not based on original research. If specific countries in Europe beside Ireland really use this term or any other terms that are closely related and those came from reliable sources, then we can add that to the article. Z22 (talk) 05:18, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, we should not just decide that because the speeds are this and that range in those countries, then we should also call them higher-speed rail too without any reliable sources to use the term. As much as we like to group thing that makes sense, we as Wikipedians should not decide to call or create categories of things by ourselves. We need to only rely on reliable sources. Z22 (talk) 19:47, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The reason you haven't heard the term used in places like Germany is that despite its prominence on Wikipedia it's actually obscure American governmental jargon (and even then, not even political jargon), not a term in widespread use. Amtrak, for example, rarely if ever uses the term publicly, describing its recent wave of 110mph upgrades as High Speed Rail. I have NEVER seen the term in the mass media.

I'm inclined to think this page and the pages related to it need to be deleted as it's an extreme case of WP:UNDUE, that not only pushes a particular agenda, but does so across a network of interconnected wikipages. The content needs to be merged with High Speed Rail and portrayed, correctly, as a classification used by American government agencies to determine funding, not as a distinct classification of railway speed (where it wouldn't make any sense anyway - a line where trains can consistently travel at 110mph is going to result in faster travel times than, say, a line where trains can reach 160mph, but usually travel at 60 or below, such as the Acela Express route.) --98.254.202.225 (talk) 14:42, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The term is not just an 'obscure American governmental jargon' as you think. The term is notable and verifiable by many reliable secondary sources. It is used by government agencies, government officials, transportation planners, academias, rail industry, and the media in the US and Canada. It has very specific technical specification in term of speeds especially in Canada (160 - 240 km/h). In the US, it is more blurry in term of which speed range this would fall into, but still it has the range of "top speeds" (not about operating speeds) below the high-speed rail range. Other countries uses similar term like high-performance rail/train, but still need more info on the ranges of speeds they generally refer to. More reliable sources from other countries will be added to the article later and the structure to be changed to address the concern of the contents with specific details to North America at the moment.Z22 (talk) 02:22, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, thinking of the term Higher-Speed Rail as "a classification used by American government agencies to determine funding" is incorrect. In fact, it is the opposite. The terms used by the current US administration for the sole purpose of funding determination are "Emerging HSR" (top speeds of 90 - 110 mph) and "HSR" (top speeds > 110 mph) with two types of services, HSR-Region and HSR-Express. These terms were invented by USDOT in 2009 which are still not acceptable as HSR classification in the International Union of Railways standard (minimum top speeds on upgraded HSR lines should be 125 mph). The term Higher-Speed Rail has been used prior to 2009 by regional transportation planners to include as one of their alternatives (of mostly up to 110 mph) beside their high-speed rail alternatives. Z22 (talk) 03:34, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Since no one else had additional comments on this, I have changed the article to use the template that reflects the concerns that it may have continental bias. Z22 (talk) 05:35, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have moved the references on who use the higher-speed rail term here so that any future challenges to the use of this term can be discussed here. This will relieve the article page from carrying all these references just to show it is commonly used among these groups:

* Government agencies: From Passengers to Captains of Europe's Baltic Sea Strategy, The Development of High Speed Rail in the United States: Issues and Recent Events, and Ms. Helena Borges (Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport) at the Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Committee

* Government officials: Masse steps up high-speed rail push 40th Parliament, 2nd Session Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, and Letter to Minister of Transport from Windsor Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce

* Transportation planners: Tier I DEIS: Chapter 2 Alternatives Considered, Section 5 Rail Transportation|url=|work=Congestion Management Process (CMP), and Deliverable No. 12 – Review of Impacts of HSR on the Transportation System within the Corridor

* Academia: High-Speed Rail Buzz Overpowers Daily Chug Of Freight Trains, and Studies Track Components for Shared-Use Rail Lines

* Rail industry: High-Speed Rail (HSR) in the United States - Why Isn't There More?, and High-Speed Rivalry Picks Up Steam

* Media: The other reason Virginia didn’t seek rail money (WP Opinions), Trains Fill the Gaps in Airline Schedules, Going will be slow on high-speed rail upgrade between Chicago, St. Louis, and High-Speed Rail: Obama's High-Stakes Gamble

-- Z22 (talk) 03:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Globalize

To address the concern mentioned in the "Continental bias" section on this talk page, I added more contents for higher-speed rail in other parts of the world. The contents are still light but it already provides a framework to expand to cover the higher-speed rail information worldwide. There is only one section now that is still US-centric. I moved the Globalize template down from the article level to that section. The strategies for rail improvements in that section are applicable worldwide, but they just lack examples from countries other than the US. When I have time, I will try to find reliable sources to diversify the examples.

Also I added "Similar categories" section. If anyone knows of train categories in some countries that fit the higher-speed rail but they are not called as such, please help expanding that section with reliable sources. Z22 (talk) 20:20, 13 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The strategies for rail improvements section now includes the examples from the other country with higher-speed rail, Australia. I have removed the Globalize warning from that section. Z22 (talk) 09:15, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Higher-speed rail/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: MusikAnimal (talk · contribs) 23:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be taking on this review. This may take a while as I'm generally very thorough with my reviews, and this article is somewhat sizable. Thanks for your patience! — MusikAnimal ^talk 23:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. Has an appropriate reference section:

B. Citations to reliable sources:

C. No original research:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

Concerns

Definitions

This may be more FA-criteria, but perhaps we're using too many citations to support material unlikely to be challenged, in stating who uses the term higher-speed rail.
These are some countries that have some definitions on higher-speed rail I'd personally reword this to flow nicer, how about "Some countries with an established definition of higher-speed rail include:"
In the list, I see that "higher-speed rail" is first used in double-quotes, and later it and other terms are presented in italics. I personally think using double-quotes is more fitting, but if you want to show emphasis we should use the <em> HTML tag or the {{em}} template (MOS:EMPHASIS).

Speed limits

Second paragraph, "at-grade crossings", I'd link this as with [[At-grade intersection|At-grade crossings]]]]
In Europe … Is there a source to support these claims?

Similar categories

Again with italicized "higher-speed rail". I'm not completely opposed to using italics, but I do think we should keep it consistent throughout the article.
More issues with italics… should all the railroad networks (InterCity, Mini-shinkansen, etc) be italicized? They are not in their corresponding articles. MOS:ITALIC does detail that trains and locomotives may be italicized, but I'm unsure if that applies to railroad networks/services.

Rail improvement strategies

In the Speed limits section, we don't refer to "positive train control" as a proper noun, yet here under "signal upgrades" we do. Looks like lowercase is the correct representation.
Under "track improvements", the first paragraph contains no references. If it supported by subsequent references we should duplicate it here. Otherwise we need to find something to ensure verifiability.
"continuous welded rail" should probably not be italicized
Under "crossing improvements", third paragraph about the US is not supported with a reference.
Under "Rerouting and passing sidings", In areas that there is frequent interference … is probably better worded "In areas where there is…" (where instead of there)
Under "Electrification": The content here says electrification would require catenary lines to be build above the tracks. Just curious… what about the systems that use a third-rail next to the track? Does that not apply to higher-speed rail? Maybe we should clarify this.

Earlier attempts

The subsection on Canada is not sourced.
Under "Minnesota", looks like Empire Builder should be italicized. Meanwhile, "River Route" is first italicized and later in the first paragraph it is not.
Last sentence under Minnesota, is there a source for this?

Current efforts

The section on Canada is unsourced.
Under United States, I think we can utilize grouped footnotes for the explanatory notes (currently indicated by asterisks). I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this. I can help with implementation.
None of the measurements in this section are accompanied by metric system conversions. Obviously the US does not use the metric system, and including the conversions in the table would clutter it quite a bit. What are your thoughts?

There are also a series of dead links, and I have tagged each as such. If you're not already aware of it, there is a handy tool called the WayBack Machine to get archived versions of now nonexistant web content. Once a suitable archive is identified you can use the archiveurl and archivedate parameters of the citation templates.

This concludes my initial review. I still need to go through and do some fact checking, but feel free to go ahead and address the above concerns. I'm going to put the article on hold while we improve it. I'm confident we can meet all the GA criteria in a reasonable amount of time. — MusikAnimal ^talk 01:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for taking your time in reviewing the article and provide very detailed comments. I have addressed all sections except Current Efforts. For the Current Efforts section, I don't think there is any higher-speed rail project in the work for Canada at this time. I could not find any news source on this. I don't know who added it so I couldn't verify that. Should we just remove that then? For the grouped footnotes, I will try to do this later. For the unit conversion in table. I'm not quite sure about that. Do you know how other editors address that in other articles? It is cleaner if there is no conversion in those little table cells. If it has to be done no matter what, then I guess a clean look become secondary at that point? Z22 (talk) 06:39, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Improvements look good! Still a few things left:

I noticed you said in your edit summary that the train service names are left in italics per convention. If it's not already obvious, I'm not completely familiar with such conventions, but it seems like InterCity, Mini-shinkansen, etc, are concepts and/or networks, and the names don't appear to be italicized in their corresponding articles. Just wanted to make sure I was clear on that. If they should in fact be capitalized I'll take your word for it.
Verifiability is a must; so unfortunately, if we can't find a source for Canada's current efforts, that content will have to be removed.
As for the grouped footnotes, it occurred to me that we are also using inline citations within the explanatory footnotes... I don't know if this would even be possible if we were to use grouped footnotes. This is unique in that there does not appear to be an established way to present explanatory footnotes that meets our needs. It's fully legible, after all, so I'm going to say let's just leave it as is.
I was more interested in your opinion regarding the conversions in the table. Frankly, I agree that that would clutter it beyond legibility. Here again I'm not sure of an established guideline. In the end guidelines are, well, guidelines – we don't have to follow them verbatim. If we feel presenting the data in a different way would better for the reader, let's ignore the guideline.
Finally, perhaps you didn't see my note on all the dead links. We will need to repair those to the best of our ability, or replace them as needed.

That concludes round two of the review. We're moving along quite well, I can see the shiny green of good article icon from here :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:30, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, only the service names are italicized. You are right that the classifications are not italicized so I fixed that. For Canada, I removed the unsourced sentence and moved up a sourced paragraph from the US section to Canada because it mostly talks about the Canadian side and only have Detroit as the terminus. Agreed that for the explanatory footnotes, we can leave them that way for now. Also, I think we should leave the tables alone without unit conversions. I tried on my local changes without saving to see how the tables would look with conversions and they were messy. So we should just leave them alone. For the dead links, I hope I fixed them all. Please let me know if you see that I still leave out something that have not been addressed yet. Thanks again for your time in reviewing this. Z22 (talk) 05:21, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Y Looks excellent! This nomination has passed. Congratulations! — MusikAnimal ^talk 06:29, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. A great experience working with you on my first GA review. Z22 (talk) 03:28, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?

Most of the line from Montreal to Toronto is good for 100 mph. Since Transport Canada considers that "higher speed rail" (a term I abhor, but whatever) then the Montreal-Toronto corridor needs to be listed. --plaws (talk) 16:34, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that in Canada, the conventional rail can go up to 160km/h. The expectation of higher-speed rail is to go beyond 160km/h to more than 200km/h. At least here is a description of conventional vs. higher-speed for Cananda. Let me know if you have additional references to conclude that the Montreal to Toronto should be categorized to be higher speed. Z22 (talk) 20:15, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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The automatic conversions (mph/kmh) are wrong

160 km/h is 100 mph, not 99 mph. (160/8 = 20; 20 x 5 = 100). How do we change the automatic conversions to get the accurate values? 137.205.171.154 (talk) 14:58, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A mile is exactly 1,609.344 metres by international agreement in 1959. So it won't be exactly 1.6 km. This makes 160 km to be around 99.419 miles. Z22 (talk) 13:40, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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HrSR in Australia

Various other trains in Australia exceed the mentioned definitions for HrSR. I am specifically referring to the Xplorer, Endeavour and the strangely-named New Generation Rollingstock, the latter of which is yet to be put in revenue service. I haven't done the research, but would expect others to exist. Should these be included? Thanks, trainsandtech (talk) 02:39, 26 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion about the Northeast Regional qualifying as high-speed or higher-speed

Hello fellow Wikipedians! Just thought I'd notify people of the discussion occurring about whether Amtrak's Northeast Regional qualifies as high-speed or higher-speed. Please feel free to chime in. –Daybeers (talk) 22:08, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Advantages to HSR

There was a new section called "Advantages to HSR" added entirely without any sources. Although the content looks interesting but I don't think it is a good idea just added this. I tried to find the source(s) for this on the net, but couldn't come up with a good one that have those details mentioned in the section. What should we do with this section? Z22 (talk) 15:33, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the unsourced info after attempting to locate sources but unsuccessful. I keep this edit here in case someone can find sources for this. Z22 (talk) 02:40, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

UIC and TSI definitions of "higher"-speed rail?

UIC has classes of high-speed rail, but I haven't seen them define "higher"-speed rail explicitly. The last bullet point in the Definitions section should have the reference to higher-speed rail taken out if that cannot be supported by a reference. Z22 (talk) 17:49, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the unsourced info. The edit is here in case someone can find the source that UIC defines the term (or a similar term). Z22 (talk) 02:43, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

British InterCity

Aren't British InterCity trains basically this? I think they should be mentioned, at least. The main lines in Great Britain have a top speed of 125 mph. The WCML in the past had average speeds from London to Warrington of 104 mph (non-stop; this is slower now with COVID and with an extra stop at Crewe). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uncriticalsimon (talk • contribs) 22:02, 30 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The specific service mentioned has reverted to basically the old timetable, and so it is again timetabled at (for some services) 104 minutes for London to Warrington, which actually comes to an average of 105 mph. Uncriticalsimon (talk) 16:05, 10 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

GA reassessment

Higher-speed rail

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delisted. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:21, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Large portions of this page are uncited. There are also parts that are poorly written. Steelkamp (talk) 07:15, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with nom. I would also add: ref's need to be in main article, not the lead section (MOS:LEAD); the "In operation" and "Current efforts" sections are unclear as to what the distinction is there; the significant focus on China in the "current operations" section could form a separate article (e.g., High-speed rail in Australia). Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 07:52, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Specific problems are as follows:

alternatives to larger efforts to create or expand the high-speed rail networks.
Lead should be longer.
Though the definition of higher-speed rail varies from country to country, most countries refer to rail services operating at speeds up to 200 km/h (125 mph). Should not be in its own paragraph
but usually falling short on the intended speeds. Why the "usually". Surely if it fulfilled intended speeds, then it would become true high speed rail.
the speed range for India's higher-speed rail will be between 160 and 200 km/h (100 and 125 mph). What's with the "will be"?
A table in the middle of a list?
In Canada, the assumption about grade crossing is that operating higher-speed rail services between 160 and 200 km/h (99 and 124 mph) would require "improved levels of protection in acceptable areas". This is a nebulous statement.
In developing higher-speed rail services, one of those safety systems must be used. This seems to be original research.
which regulates the speed limits of trains with Class 5, Class 6, Class 7 and Class 8 Is this grammatically correct?
In the United States, railroad tracks are largely used for freight with at-grade crossings. Is that meant to link to level crossing rather than At-grade intersection?

Steelkamp (talk) 07:55, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This has definitely suffered from years of cruft accumulation with insufficient maintenance of the page. Will have a more thorough look this weekend but I think this will require major work to be maintained at GA status. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:53, 2 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There has been no improvement to this article in the last month. I suggest to any uninvolved users passing by that you close this GAR as delist. Steelkamp (talk) 05:29, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.