Comment by steveBK123

15 hours ago

At this point, Spain must have the worst high speed rail safety record in Europe if not.. more broadly?

I am a little surprised doing some light searching that its one of the longest high speed rail systems / highest passenger count HSR systems in Europe?

I've only taken HSR in France & Italy and not been to Spain in over 15 years so was not aware of the build out.

Would be interesting to see the figures per passenger-mile and per passenger-journey.

  • According to cursory search:

    * Spain HSR ~45M annual journeys / 30B annual passenger-kms

    * Italy HSR ~65M annual journeys / 50B annual passenger-kms

    * France HSR ~150M annual journeys / 110B annual passenger-kms

    "Italy’s annual high-speed rail (HSR) passenger fatality rate is effectively zero, as there has never been a passenger fatality recorded on the country’s dedicated high-speed network"

    "France’s dedicated high-speed lines (LGV—Lignes à Grande Vitesse) have historically maintained an extraordinary safety record. Across several decades of commercial operation since launching in 1981, there has never been a passenger fatality resulting from a high-speed crash during commercial service on a dedicated high-speed line"

    Spain by comparison has 2 fatal accidents adding up to ~100 passenger deaths this year alone. Something like 300 fatalities in its history.

    This is quite bad.