The Fast Trains of the Future Are Already Here...
// ...They're just unevenly distributed. (1)
As of 2025, you can ride a high-speed train, at speeds of up to 249 miles (400 kms) per hour, in 28 countries around the world.
China has a network of 25,000 miles (40,000 kms) of high-speed track, all of it built since 2000. Spain, which has the world's second biggest network, has 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of high-speed tracks. Japan, the originator of the bullet-train, and France, homeland of the train à grande vitesse, boast about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) each.
As of 2025, the United States, the richest nation in the world—indeed, in the history of the world—has 85 miles (137 km) of true high speed lines. Morocco, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Greece and Uzbekistan can all boast significantly more high-speed track mileage. Canada, my own country, has precisely zero miles. (Hey, what is that in kilometers? Hold my double-double: tappa-tappa-tappa, oh yeah, also fucking zero.)
The minimum threshold for high-speed rail (HSR), according to the European Union and the International Union of Railways, is 155 miles (255 kms) per hour. Both bodies allow an exception for trains running on existing tracks that have been upgraded to high-speed standards, thus lowering the threshold to 124 mph, or 200 km/h. By Japanese or Chinese standards, 124 mph is a joke: at that speed, an N700S shinkansen or one of China's new-model CR450s is barely starting to stretch its metallic legs.
The Acela Express, which is all the United States has to boast in the way of HSR, currently doesn't meet the minimum for true high-speed: it tops out at 150 mph. (Briefly, somewhere around Providence. On a good day. If you're lucky.) In fact, on the entire 457-mile (735-km) run between D.C. and Boston, the Acela Express averages just 65 miles (105 kms) per hour. The fastest I've ever gone on a Canadian train, one of the Siemens Venture trainsets brought in with great fanfare by national operator Via Rail late in 2022, was 98 miles per hour (that's 158 km/h, eh?). At that speed, we did manage to whip by some cars backed up on the Trans-Canada Highway around Saint-Hyacinth, which was certainly gratifying. Though soon enough we were slowing down to negotiate the agonizingly poky approach to Montreal's Central Station.
