The Competitive Advantage of High Speed Rail

There are many things a train can do that an airplane cannot, e.g. go underneath city streets, split up into many pieces. A metaphor will illustrate the main point of this book: dogs are often not able to catch cats even though they are faster, because dogs cannot climb trees, jump onto rooftops, squeeze underneath fences, etc. High Speed Rail (HSR) planning up to this point, especially in North America, proposed to have dogs and cats compete on a wide open field. This book assesses the internal distribution advantage of High Speed Rail vis-à-vis air. It postulates a new paradigm: convergence of heretofore individually optimized urban and intercity rail networks into one coherent inter-metropolitan high speed transportation system. The in-depth study of the competition between air and HSR in Japan, a country in which the two modes compete head-on and with little regulatory interference, will help any air or rail executive better take advantage of the post-deregulation environment. However, for transportation planners in North America, where widely dispersed urban areas deprive HSR from its traditional access advantage, it is a must-read.