Story Behind German High Speed Rail System

derail lovers welcome to railways explained as we promised in the previous video today's topic is a detailed explanation of the german high-speed rail system in case you haven't seen that video we recommend you pause this one check that one out and then come back here we promise you won't regret it now before we even start with the discussion it's good to mention right away that in one period there were two germanies west and east and that this division and later process of their integration greatly influenced the planning and development of the german high-speed rail system anyway let's start this video with the concept on which this system is based and then in the second part using some cool animations we'll try to show the development of this amazing high-speed rail network if you regularly watch our videos you already know that the high-speed rare revolution started in japan in 1964. it was when a dedicated passenger line to kaido sakab was opened for a speed up to 210 kilometers per hour the principle of separation of passenger and freight transport was followed by friends with the opening of the railway line paris leon in 1981 for a speed up to 270 kilometers per hour west germany soon joined this game however the german preparations for the adoption of a high-speed services saw a time-consuming debate between the ministry of transport and the rally management centered around the key issue of whether new lines should be passenger dedicated or mixed as the state railways obtained a large part of their income from freight traffic they were hesitant with high investments in new infrastructure which would not serve the freight traffic in addition west germany dan and germany today has a different settlement structure with the population more numerous by third than that of france for example on a territory smaller by third this is more than twice the population density which in essence means that the distance between densely populated areas is smaller having this in mind it was thought that quality service could be achieved by upgrading the existing lines and providing point-to-point service also in some cases it was necessary to build a new line for higher speeds but only where it is justified or even a combination of these two approaches heavy aerial bombing during world war ii left the german rail network badly damaged moreover the political division of germany cut its east-west oriented network in half forcing a north-south reorientation in what was then west germany the west german federal government has developed a comprehensive plan for the entire transportation infrastructure including railways with a special focus on the railways that stretch from north to south the 1973 federal transport plan included a high speed line for mixed traffic between cologne and gross gerald as well as between hanover and wurzburg and between meinha and stuttgart also the development of high-speed trains based on the latest research and development with the trademark made in germany was planned therefore works on the first completely new hanover wurzburg line in the length of 327 kilometers began in august 1973. it was opened in sections between 1988 and 1991. three years later in 1976 works began on the 99 kilometers long minecraft stuttgart high-speed railway this line was officially opened also in 1991. as for the rolling stock we will discuss this topic in more detail in our next video but here for the sake of genesis it should be mentioned that after the extensive studies by the federal ministry of research and technology financing was secured to start manufacturing of the series 11001 inter-city experimental in september 1982 the train was delivered in 1985 was used mainly for testing purposes for the new intercity express trains and as a showcase train it sets the new speed record for railed vehicles on may 1 1988. it reached the speed of 406.9 kilometers per hour this speed record only lasted one and a half years when it was exceeded on december 5th 1989 by the french tgv atlantique with 482.4 kilometers per hour in 1988 db ordered the production of 82 units of the third generation class 401 ic-1 it was designed to reach a maximum speed of 280 kilometers per hour on new tracks and 200 kilometers per hour on the existing tracks therefore the german high-speed rail system is known by the name intercity express the next railway line that was planned to be built was cologne frankfurt however due to the southern fall of the berlin wall and subsequent german reunification the provisional west german capital of bonn was moved back to berlin resulting in the relocation of the german government and making new transport planning an urgent necessity then the german unification transport projects or german unity transport projects were prepared commonly known by their german initials vde as you might guess these projects form a set of major construction projects to increase and improve the transport links this time between eastern and western germany this meant that the east-west direction is now a high priority and that it is necessary to connect berlin with the rest of the country as soon as possible the logical choice was to continue the construction of the railway from hanover to berlin in the length of 258 kilometers so the works began in december 1992 and lasted until 1998. with the timetable change on 20th september 1998 the travel time between berlin and hanover was reduced from 4 hours and 12 minutes to one and a half hours the berlin frankfurt travel time was reduced to even four hours the drastic travel time reduction on the new line led to rising passenger numbers which was also influenced by the cancellation of the competing air services between berlin and hanover the second feature we wanted to add is that the german high-speed rail network was introduced and extended in two major waves which were structurally very different during the first wave ranging from 1991 to about 1998 all large cities in germany were successfully connected to high-speed rail however due to the unequal distribution of these cities across the states the majority of 46 high-speed rail stations in 1998 were located in only 3 out of 16 german states north rhine westphalia baden-wurttemberg and hessen several states through which the railways passed but which did not receive any or only a small number of stops therefore strongly demanded that high-speed rail stations should also be established on their territory as a result the network was expanded in the second wave to cover smaller cities on the road between metropolitan hubs the third feature that we wanted to point out is the shortcomings of the decision of the german railways regarding the introduction of mixed traffic on high-speed railways first it was very difficult to make a sustainable timetable without disruption of daytime freight due to large speed differences between passenger and freight traffic second the required time slots for night freight traffic could not be allocated because high speed lines require high levels of maintenance that can only be done during the night on the screen you can see the two examples of drawn roots in the timetable on the first picture you can see that it is possible to organize 12 trains in one hour on one track as they move at the same speed while on the other we have a completely different situation due to different speeds the track occupancy is different and therefore it is possible to organize a smaller number of chains in this case 5 trains per hour the topic of the railway timetable is very interesting and therefore it is coming soon on our channel the different weights of passenger and freight trains is another factor favoring the separation of passenger and freight traffic lighter passenger trains can overcome steeper gradients about 35 per mil while heavier freight trains can do about 10. this permits more direct alignments which means fewer civil structures anyway the 1973 federal transport plan required a maximum grade of 12.5 per ml for mixed traffic high speed lines but to fulfill this requirement it was necessary to build a large number of structures such as bridges and tunnels which certainly lead to an increase in the cost of the construction on the screen you can see the difference between these two approaches cologne frankfurt is exclusively for passenger traffic and has a maximum grade of 40 per mil and has significantly fewer structures compared to the hanover wurzburg which has a grade of 12.5 per ml and a lot of tunnels and viaducts another dispute that required resolution was the incompatibility between high speed traffic and short distance traffic especially in conservations the solution in this case required separation of the two infrastructures and giving priority to high-speed services but freight traffic is now demanding the same privileges to protect its business quality which suffers serious delays because of short distance commuter traffic this video should not pass without mention of a trans rapid the german developed magnet train we are actually a bit surprised due to the fact that we are not receiving that many comments on our channel to cover this topic anyway planning for the trans-rapid system started in 1969 test facility for the system was built in amsland in 1987 and in 1991 was approved to perform testing of maglev trains the latest version the transrapid09 is designed for speeds of 500 kilometers per hour also in 2002 the first commercial implementation was completed the shanghai maglev in china which connects the city of shanghai's rapid transit network in the length of 30.5 kilometers with shanghai pudong international airport details about this system can be found in our video on the commercial use of maglev technologies around the world let's now go back to german high-speed rail network and see an animated map of its construction with some basic information about the most important projects hanover wurtzberg was the first high-speed railway in germany it was newly built in the length of 327 kilometers for his speed up to 280 kilometers per hour its construction began in 1973 and it was completed in out of these 327 kilometers 120 are in tunnels meinham stuttgart high speed railway line was also a completely new line in the length of 99 kilometers design speed also kilometers per hour its construction began in 1976 and it was completed in 1991. hanover berlin high speed railway line in the length of 258 kilometers includes new line on about 58 percent between obese felder and berlin stuck in for speeds up to 250 kilometers per hour while on the other segments it was upgraded for speeds up to 200 and 160 kilometers per hour the cologne frankfurt again completely new line in the length of 180 kilometers constructed for speeds up to 300 kilometers per hour this line was constructed between 1995 and 2002. the line's grades go up to 40 per mil this grade requires trains with a high power to weight ratio which is currently only met by third generation ic trains this means that this line is not for mixed traffic the colon accion achen high-speed rail line is the german part of the trans-european transport network's project high-speed line paris brussels cologne the line within germany has a length of about 70 kilometers which was improved for a speed up to 250 kilometers per hour in the period from 1997 to 2002 the remaining line from durian to achen allows speeds up to 160 kilometers per hour with some slower sections in belgium the high speed line is continued the so-called high-speed line 3. the nuremberg munich high-speed rail line in length of 171 kilometers includes a new line between nuremberg and ingolstadt in length of 90 kilometers constructed in the period from 1998 to 2006 for the speed of 300 kilometers per hour the remaining existing sections were improved over time for a speed up to 200 kilometers per hour barefoot leipzig or a high speed rail line is a completely new line in the length of 123 kilometers construction lasted from 1996 to 2015. on about 90 kilometers of line it is possible to travel at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour while on the remaining parts the design speed is 250 and on smaller sections 160 kilometers per hour the track is made with a slab track and the line is equipped exclusively with etcs level 2 without signals i.e it can only be used by vehicles equipped with etcs on-board system nuremberg airfort high-speed rail line is a 191 kilometers long section of the high-speed route between berlin and munich it consists of a new line between ebensfeld and erfurt for a speed of 300 kilometers per hour in the length 107 kilometers and an upgraded line between nuremberg and evansville for a speed up to 230 kilometers per hour construction of the new railway line mostly with its lab track began in 1996 and was not completed until 2017. what is interesting is that about 50 percent of the route consists of civil structures 41 kilometers of tunnels and 12 kilometers of viaducts the rest of the network marked in blue has been upgraded for speeds up to 200 kilometers per hour while the network marked in gray has been upgraded for speeds up to 160 kilometers per hour the ic system carried 5.1 million passengers in 1991 and that number grew rapidly after 10 years in 2001 a total of about 46.7 million passengers were transported while in 2011 that number increased to 76.1 million passengers in 2019 which we often take as representative 99 million passengers were transported i.e about 270.000 per day due to the impact of the pandemic the number in 2020 was only 55 million as for the continuation of the development of the network we believe that germany has finished launching such projects namely the negative experience with major high-speed rail projects have reduced the appetites of policy makers and db for starting additional expensive adventures first the combined high-speed and regional transit stuttgart project is the most expensive european railway project with estimated costs of more than 10 billion euros it includes the construction of a heavily debated new underground station in stuttgart where the current 17 track station need to be replaced by an underground 8 track station the decision for this project was officially adopted in 1996 however the construction started only in 2010 after long process of legal permission coordination of public authorities and financial negotiations with deutsche ban furthermore citizen protests and the subsequent mediation processes interrupted the project start ending after a referendum in 2011. the plan is to open the line for operation in 2025 that is 29 years after decision the second example is the most important international north-south karlsruhe basel rail corridor link which is showing slow progress paired with a high cost increase costs estimated in 2015 at 7.1 billion have significantly increased in may 2020 db estimated the total cost of the project at 14.2 billion euros the expectation is that this major connection which germany designed not only for high-speed rail but also for efficient freight transport will not be accomplished before 2035. this was the story of the german high-speed rail system on railways explained we hope you enjoyed and be ready for next week when we plan to talk about the development and different generations of ic trains don't forget to like this video share it with your real loving friends and of course subscribe to our channel to help us improve our production check out our patreon page the link is in the description until the next time goodbye [Applause]

Channel: Railways Explained

Views: 204,292

Keywords: german high speed rail, german high speed train, high speed train, ICE train, high speed, high speed rail, Germany, made in germany, best railways in europe, european railways, high speed lines in germany, high speed lines, railways, railroad, ICE, DB, Deutsche Bahn, german ice train, intercity express, german high speed rail network, german high speed train map, german ice high speed trains

Id: -grrRbL6DDo

Length: 17min 16sec (1036 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021