Standards
Most of the above high speed lines are assumed to be 25 kV AC (except for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway which use 15 kV, and old Italian, part of Belgian and part of Russian high speed lines which use 3 kV), a majority left-hand running (except in Germany, Spain, Russia, and Shanghai Maglev Train.), almost all use conventional tracks and generally use standard gauge (except in Finland, Russia etc.) on their high speed lines, even where the national gauge is different. This will enhance interoperability should high speed lines in different countries meet. There are many different train protection systems in use. In Europe, however they will be replaced by the ERTMS/ETCS system in most countries (using standard gauge) before 2020, which will further enhance interoperability.
Read more about this topic: Planned High-speed Rail By Country
Famous quotes containing the word standards:
“In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“That’s the great danger of sectarian opinions, they always accept the formulas of past events as useful for the measurement of future events and they never are, if you have high standards of accuracy.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)