(Originally Published in Barcelona Metropolitan, July 2008)

On February 20th, 2008, Renfe inaugurated its long-awaited high-speed rail service between Barcelona and Madrid. The AVE (Alta Velocidad Española) sold 28,418 tickets on the very first day of advance sales. Renfe hopes to compete with the airlines, though the minimum ticket price of 101€ is far above the discount airfares that are currently available. The trip takes about two and three-quarter hours, which is a bit more than a one-hour and fifteen minute flight; but given travel to and from the airport, plus check-in and security, it works out to about the same.

Hurling across the land at one-third the speed of a jet airliner is an invigorating idea for some, and somewhat daunting for others. At 300 km/h, a curve that turns on even a 5 km radius would be considered tight. Every 12 seconds, another kilometre passes beneath you and –to the driver in the power head—a miniscule brown dot in the distance could expand into a derailing cow well before the 1500 metres needed for a full stop. Under such conditions, even the constant hyper-vigilance of an exceptionally attentive driver would be insufficient to assure the safety of passengers and cows alike. Which is why there is an alternative.

“We use ERTMS, which is an extremely advanced security and traffic control system,” Fernando Fuentes told Metropolitan. “Very similar to what they use in aviation.” Fuentes is a spokesperson for Adif, the company that builds, administers and maintains the infrastructure of the AVE. The ERTMS system to which he referred is the European Railway Traffic Management System, which is the standard system in use for coordinating 23 different train systems throughout Europe. ERTMS is now used on over 5,000 kilometres of high-speed tracks and over 3,000 high-speed trains.

“High-speed train operators cannot simply hope that the line is clear. They need proof of this at all times. It is vital that an integrated system is in place that will advise operators of any problems. That’s where ERTMS comes in: all signalling information is transmitted to the train through the rails. And all information coming from the train, like velocity, weight, controls, temperatures, things like that, are sent through the rails to the regional control centres. It is an extremely precise system.”

While Adif is responsible for the infrastructure, Renfe is responsible for the safety and security of the trains themselves. Unfortunately, Renfe declined to be interviewed for this article and instead provided a dossier that affirms that the carbon footprint of the AVE is 5 times less per passenger than that of an air journey.

However, also in this document, titled, Dossier Alta Velocidad, is mention of 110 AVE trains in the Renfe fleet, representing a total cost of € 3.4 billion. These trains, manufactured by the French company Alstom, Spanish Baombardier and Talgo and German Siemens, represent the latest generation of technology. One of the most innovative features is placement of the bogies (axles and wheels), which are now situated between the cars in order to cut down on vibration and aerodynamic drag, as well as allowing each car to move independently.

Such a setup also helps to avoid what is known as a “snakehead.”

A snakehead is what happened to the InterCityExpress high-speed train Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in Eschede, Germany in 1998 when a broken axle lifted the first passenger car off the track. One-hundred and one people were killed, yet the power head of the train and two other cars managed to pull into the station completely unaware that anything had happened. When the station manager informed him, “You’ve passed through alone!,” the driver purportedly fell into a state of shock and could not leave the power head for hours. The cause of the accident has been attributed to an improper wheel diameter in the design, though this particular wheel design had run 1.8 million kilometres in its four years of operation leading up to the Eschede accident.

Such accidents are nearly non-existent, so much so that much literature on high-speed travel reports “zero fatalities.” Though this may not be 100 percent true, the reality is that high-speed rail is relatively safe in comparison to just about any other form of travel. The lines are fenced off and rigorously maintained. Bogies, which account for 35-40% percent of car maintenance costs, have a complex system of brakes plus backup systems.

High speed trains have been running since the inauguration of Japan’s Tōkaidō Shinkansen, in October 1964. Given the state of advanced technology as well as the minute detail attended to by engineers, the AVE is standing on the shoulders of giants who have already been tested in the field. As Fernando Fuentes said, “If there’s ever an accident, usually it’s because of human, not technical, error.”