Nearly 200000 km, i.e. 15 % of all railway lines in the world, are at present electrified. This may not seem a lot, but what matters is the rate of expansion. Over the last 40 years, the years following the Second World War, the increase has been 4 % per annum with the result that the figure has gone up five-fold over that period. And expansion shows no sign of tailing off. What is significant is the proportion of traffic conveyed by electric traction. Since electrified lines are usually heavy-haul lines, it is not surprising that percentages here are considerably higher. The table below gives the order of magnitude. This depends of course on the structures of individual railways but is generally in the 1:2 range for percentage of lines to percentage of traffic. In view of the enormous volume of rail-borne traffic in the U.S.S.R. (half of all traffic throughout the world) - the vast proportion of this which is hauled by electric traction (60 %) - t/km and passenger/km for electric traction in the world can be roughly estimated at around 40 %. If present trends continue, the 50 % mark should be reached by the turn of the century.
Electrification: Why not
Internationaler Entwicklungsstand und Zukunftsaussichten der Bahn-Elektrifizierung
1987
4 Seiten, 1 Tabelle, 1 Quelle
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Englisch
Electrification vs diesel-electrification
Engineering Index Backfile | 1948
|IuD Bahn | 1994
|Engineering Index Backfile | 1912
Online Contents | 2018
|NTRS | 1978
|