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The Political Economies of High-Speed Rail: A Global View book cover

1st Edition

The Political Economies of High-Speed Rail A Global View

Edited By Natalia Buier, Simon Haikola Copyright 2027
288 Pages 24 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

High-speed rail (HSR) is the object of conflicting assessments. It is simultaneously viewed as modern, backwards, progressive, conservative, green, unsustainable, disruptive and path-dependent. This volume takes as its starting point the heterogeneous appraisal of contemporary high speed rail development and unpacks it in order to reveal the diversity of processes and relations out of which HSR... Read more

List of figures

List of contributors

Foreword by Anthony Perl

Acknowledgements

List of acronyms

Introduction: Political economies of high speed rail

Natalia Buier and Simon Haikola

 

Part 1. Pioneers and leaders

 

1. Japan

The World Bank and the Shinkansen

Jessamyn R. Abel

 

2. France

The TGV: public service vs. profitability

Raymond Woessner

 

3. Spain

Not meant to succeed: Spanish high speed rail and the elusive search for commercial rail

Natalia Buier

 

4.  China

Interactive development: The rise of China’s high speed railway system

Karl Yan

 

Part 2. Contenders and followers

 

5. UK

HS2 and the construction and dismantling of the national legacy narrative in the UK

Geoffrey Dudley, David Banister & Tim Schwanen

 

6. Taiwan

Navigating through challenges: The evolution of Taiwan's high speed rail from privatisation to nationalisation after 2007

Kuo-Hui Chang

 

7. Morocco

Banking on rails: colonial concessionaires, capital flows, and green bonds in the political economy of Moroccan railways

Cristiana Strava

 

8. Denmark and Germany

High Speed across the Fehmarn Belt

Dan Durrant

 

Part 3. Dissenters and sceptics

 

9. United States

United States high speed rail: A politics of mobility perspective

Andrew R. Goetz & Jason Henderson

 

10. Canada

Explaining the absence of high speed rail in Canada: insurmountable political economic and geographical barriers

Ryan Katz-Rosene

 

11. Sweden

An uncomfortable compromise – The unravelling of Swedish high speed rail as an ecological-modernity vision for transport

Simon Haikola

 

Index

Biography

Natalia Buier is a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid. She is the author of Frontiers of Appropriation: Spanish High-Speed Rail and Capitalist Environment-Making (Berghahn, 2026) and co-editor (with Susana Narotkzy and Theodora Vetta) of Agricultural Extractivism in the Mediterranean Region: A Socioecological View.

Simon Haikola is a senior associate professor at the Department of Thematic Studies – Technology and Social Change at Linköping University, Sweden. He investigates the politics of the environment with a focus on the state and how state policies are implemented across scales.

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