Whoosh, the First High-Speed Train of the Tropics that Encourages Sustainable Mobility

It’s named Whoosh – like the whistle of a train speeding at 350 km/h – and it is Indonesia’s first high-speed rail line, inaugurated in October 2023. But more importantly, it is the first high-speed rail line in the tropics and the entire Southern Hemisphere. A milestone that confirms Jakarta’s infrastructural ambitions and projects Southeast Asia into a new era of sustainable rail mobility.

At 142 kilometers long, the line connects the cities of Jakarta and Bandung in just 40 minutes, compared to over three hours by road. Its tracks host special high-speed trains designed to withstand tropical weather conditions, monsoon rains, and seismic activity. For Indonesia, this is a strategic project, built with an investment of about 7.3 billion dollars, involving the construction of viaducts and tunnels for over half the route, and four intermediate stations between the capital and Bandung.

Today, Whoosh trains carry an average of 18,000 passengers per day on 62 runs, with a clear objective: to reduce the intense road traffic that costs Indonesia about 6.5 billion dollars annually in lost time and environment pollution.

The Indonesian high-speed rail line is just the latest piece in a global puzzle. According to the International Union of Railways (UIC), at the end of 2022, the global high-speed rail network exceeded 59,000 km, with China leading the rankings with 42,000 km, followed by Europe with 11,500 km.

Adopting this sustainable mobility model means drastically reducing emissions and air pollution levels, cutting down road traffic, and shortening travel times.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that a high-speed train produces 14 grams of CO₂ per passenger per kilometer, compared to 104 g/km for a car and 285 g/km for a flight. In practice, high-speed trains allow for up to 90% lower emissions than airplanes on the same routes.

A concrete example? On the Madrid-Barcelona line, high-speed rail has reduced air traffic by 60%, saving 90,000 tons of CO₂ annually.

Reducing air pollution is only one of the positive impacts of high-speed rails. The OECD–International Transport Forum report highlights how building high-speed lines generates a 30–40% increase in direct and indirect employment, with positive effects on GDP and the development of the areas served.

It is estimated that the arrival of high-speed rail can boost the GDP of the regions involved by 2–3%, encouraging investment, tourism, and new productive activities, while also increasing property values by 10–20% in areas served by new high-speed rail stations.

Italy was among the pioneering countries for high-speed rail in Europe, starting with the Florence–Rome route inaugurated in the 1990s and progressively extended to Turin and Salerno.

Today the Italian high-speed rail network is expanding toward the South and Northeast, thanks also to major projects – commissioned by RFI (FS Italiane Group) – being developed by the Webuild Group, Italy’s leading complex infrastructure builder. With over 13,648 km of railways built around the world, Webuild is currently working on strategic projects like the Naples–Bari line, which will bring high-speed trains to the Adriatic; the Verona–Padua line; the Brenner Base Tunnel; and the Third Giovi Rail Pass, which will connect Genoa first with Milan and then with Europe.

Among the major ongoing Italian railway projects are also the Salerno–Reggio Calabria line, as well as the Messina–Catania–Palermo line, which will significantly increase the transport capacity of Sicilian railways, bringing double-track infrastructure to Sicily for the first time and thus reducing travel times.

These projects involve over 8,000 direct and third-party workers in Italy alone, along with a supply chain of approximately 5,400 businesses.The total investment in the South is around 13 billion euros, and it’s set to reduce the infrastructural and economic gap with the North of the country.