It is reported here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100912/ap_on_hi_te/as_china_schwarzenegger_riding_the_rails
that CA Governor Schwarzenegger, on a trade mission to China, Japan, and South Korea, has so far checked out (mostly photo op) HSR [sic] in China.
Article author posits that “[t]he U.S. is the world leader in freight railway technology but has almost no high-speed rail expertise. It will have to import the technology for the 13 regional projects that have won $8.5 billion in initial federal funding, with $2.5 billion more to come this year and hundreds of billions needed before lines are up and running.”
We shall see !
Let’s just hope he checks the financials. HSR is taking the Chinese rail system under.
http://transportation.northwestern.edu/docs/2010/2010.05.25.Li_Flyer.pdf
Things are not going all that well with German HSR either.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,716217,00.html
From reading the article, it sounds like he is going to China not only for the trains, but also, for the money to pay for them.
There is more going on in the Stuttgart case than Der Spiegel tells. The first proposal would have moved the station served by the ICE trains out to one of the suburban stations, as accessing the main station involves a slow speed diversion from the through route from Mannheim/Paris to München/Vienna. The City Burghers shot that idea down fast. As the Stuttgart station is a terminus they have to change ends and go back the way that they came in (Württemburg was an independent kingdom when the station was built and Stuttgart was the capital). Also not mentioned in the article is that the construction of the new line from Stuttgart to Ulm will free up capacity on the old double track mainline between the two cities. The old line features the Geislinger Steige over the watershed divide between the Rhine watershed and the Danube, a section of 2.25 % gradient with 70 kph speed limits(43 mph). All freights except a few lighter Intermodals require pushers.
Wiki on Geislinger Steige
Mannheim to near Stuttgart is 4 tracks, and Neu Ulm to München is 4 tracks, so the existing line is a serious bottleneck that limits both freight and passenger capacity. The new line will be shared with suburban services to a part of the Stuttgart urban area currently lacking it, and finally that it will serve the City’s airport, much more directly than the current route which loops around half the perimeter of the city taking quite a bit of time and consequently not carrying large numbers of people. Regardless the new line is going to be very expensive, made moreso by people insisting on more tunnels so that they are not bothered by noise. This particula