On 14-16 December last, a colloquium on “Railways and Speed. Two Centuries of Speed on the Railways, Thirty Years of High-Speed Trains” was held at UIC Headquarters by the French Railway Historical Society (AHICF), a body devoted to the history of rail transport in France and the stories of the people who build, operate and use railways. 30 years after the launch of France’s first dedicated high speed service and 20 years after the first historical research into the origins of high speed in France and worldwide, AHICF examined the role and function of speed in railways.
The colloquium was opened by Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, UIC Director-General and Chairman of AFFI (French Association of Railway Engineers), who hailed the significant preparatory work carried out by AHICF in collaboration with and supported by SNCF, UIC, AFFI and Eurostar. He also paid particular tribute to Michel Walrave, a previous UIC Director-General and one of the architects of European high speed rail. He expressed his pleasure that the colloquium was being held at UIC, the “home of railways worldwide”, and noted that the topics addressed – the origin and the resounding success of high speed – were very much of a piece with the subjects and projects on which UIC coordinated international cooperative ventures. “UIC disseminates the successes of high speed rail worldwide, and organises benchmarking and peer reviews between current and future high speed operators. Moreover, UIC has conducted valuable studies for its members on subjects such as high speed and the environment, high speed and energy, high speed and the city (stations), etc. Following in the wake of Japan (almost 50 years of Shinkansen services), France (30 years of the TGV) and Europe more generally, the principle of high speed rail systems has taken off in Asia (Korea, Taiwan, China), on the American continent with the launch of Acela, more recently in Turkey, and in Africa with the initiation of work in Morocco. Ambitious plans have been announced in the USA, Latin America (Argentina and Brazil), Saudi Arabia, Iran and elsewhere.
In offering an alternative to air or road transport, this form of passenger transport today represents the railways’ flagship product on practically every continent”.
The colloquium featured a wide range of speakers, including many from abroad such as Colin Divall, Professor of Railway Studies and Head of the Institute of Railway Studies and Transport History, University of York; Natalia A. Starostina, Assistant Professor, Young Harris College (Georgia, USA); Louis Gillieaux, independent researcher, former Head of Documentation and Railway History at SNCB Group; Andres López Pita, Professor, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona; Henry Marty-Gauquié, Director and representative of the European Investment Bank Group in Paris and Bernard Gordon, Head of Division, Western Europe, Infrastructure Division, European Investment Bank. From different angles, all examined whether high speed could be considered a break with the past or an act of continuity in the history of technology, innovation and services, and what role it could play in town and country planning and in competition at regional, national, European and global level.
The colloquium was an opportunity to situate high speed within the broader historical context of speed in railways, and within the history of customer expectations, services and mobility. Georges Ribeill, honorary Research Director at the École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées de Paris, a major engineering school, gave an overview of the high speed rail system as practiced in France. On the evening of 15 December, a round-table chaired by Iñaki Barrón de Angoiti, UIC Passenger and High Speed Department Director and Coordinator for the Latin American Region, addressed “The future of high speed: what will high speed look like in future? History and future prospects”. This session featured Michel Walrave, UIC honorary Director-General; Michel Leboeuf, Director, Major Projects and Future Prospects Division, SNCF Voyages; François Lacôte, Senior Vice President, Counsellor to the President, ALSTOM TRANSPORT; Yosuke Mizukami, Director, Japan Railways Group, Paris Office and Francis Beaucire, Professor, University of Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne. The round-table was followed by an AFFI conference on “Railway security: the European Protectrail research project”, featuring Jacques Colliard, UIC Security Division Manager.
Lastly, Guillaume Pepy, SNCF President, concluded the two-day colloquium and discussion by stressing the essential concept of “railway time”, which he characterised as long and slow, and the need to include this notion in current thinking about the future of railways. Further, he stressed that high speed and Europe were intrinsically linked in the sense that Europe is particularly suited to high speed and vice versa. In this context, it is also important to bear in mind the historical aspect and the various milestones of the last 50 years, a significant number of which have been technical advances – with a major breakthrough made more or less every ten years – in thinking about models for high speed rail in the future. Mr Pepy stressed the need to keep an open mind vis-à-vis other concepts of high speed and to see for ourselves what others do and what other models exist, stating: “We are open to other visions of high speed rail, and I would like to share with you three of the challenges we face. Firstly, the challenge of competition: you will know that this is not a new issue in the economics of networks or railways, but it will doubtless require us all to reassess some of our former certainties. We can all prove that fundamentally, we do not need competition and never will, that we have models for optimising the rail system in which competition plays no part…. but competition is on its way all the same, and this means that whatever our intellectual stance on the matter, a number of models will find themselves disrupted, and that technically and commercially speaking we will have to analyse what the impacts of competition are on the sector. The second challenge is that of the rail system as a whole: at SNCF, we initially lobbied for a highly pragmatic approach, that is, we wanted the goals for the development of rail and competition to be clearly stated but also that states were given a free hand to achieve them as they saw fit. In Europe today, the situation is quite the reverse: the organisational and institutional framework is defined at European level, to the detriment of the goals… let us thus address things in the correct order. We must be intransigent on the goals, and the various countries and railways must be allowed a choice of tactics as to how they achieve them. The third and final challenge, and not the easiest to achieve, is the reinvention of the high speed model: do we not need to follow other European countries, such as Switzerland, and reintroduce connecting services, even if French travellers still consider direct trains the be-all and end-all?"
The proceedings of the colloquium are set to be available on request from AHICF during the first quarter of 2012.
For further information, please consult the AHICF website: http://www.ahicf.com/
