Today’s New York Times offers a closer look at Spain’s HSR success, with a reporter filing her story from the AVE:

Two years ago, nearly 90 percent of the six million people traveling between Madrid and Barcelona went by air. But early this year the number of train travelers on the route surpassed fliers. The trajectory is ever upward.

The shift has political and economic benefits for Spain, which like other European Union countries has set out to lower its carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent over 10 years. Analysts say that such emissions per passenger on a high-speed train are about one-fourth of those generated by flying or driving.

But AVE’s passengers are not necessarily thinking green. Like high-speed railroads in France and China, Renfe — Spain’s national train operator — also has performed the ultimate green sleight of hand simply by making the low-emissions option more comfortable and convenient.

“Since the day this train opened, I have never, never set foot on the plane again,” said Mr. Martínez, 31, a lawyer who travels between Madrid and Barcelona twice a week. “Why would anyone fly?”

In other words, people in Spain really like taking the train even over other previously popular options. That’s even though Spain chose a different approach than France when setting its HSR fares:

But unlike the French, who sought to maintain a low-cost image as their trains gained speed, Renfe decided to go upscale, said Josep Valls, a professor of marketing at the Esade Business School in Barcelona.

AVE tickets cost as much as plane tickets — from about €120 to €200 one way, or $160 to $300, though cheaper advance fares can be found. The train offers assigned reclining seats, computer outlets, movies, headsets, good food, even gloved attendants…

Spain’s high-speed train sector seems well positioned to expand. All AVE lines turn a profit and have easily survived price wars waged by airlines, Mr. Valls said. What is more, trains require fewer employees and far less costly infrastructure than do planes.

What’s even more remarkable about this is that the AVE is maintaining these ridership levels, and generating operating surpluses as a result (something I really wish the NYT article had mentioned), despite Spain being one of the hardest-hit countries in the Eurozone by the recession. Only Greece and Ireland appear to have taken a bigger hit than Spain, which had a big property bubble that burst, leaving nearly 20% of the country unemployed. The fact that the AVE maintains its ridership and profitability during the recession is testament to the resilience and popularity of high speed passenger rail.

Of course, it’s not the only way to price HSR service. As DoDo’s Puente AVE post from a year ago today showed us, France’s decision to emphasize ridership over revenue in the first years of the TGV 30 years ago paid off both in terms of generating riders and long-term financial support for the system. We’re nearly 10 years away from making final decisions about fares for California HSR, but both France and Spain offer different, compelling models to study.

I’m sure that the NYT article about the success of the AVE will bring out those who claim that Europe is more suited to passenger rail, that it has different attitudes about travel – in short, that Spain isn’t California. This is as good a time as any to recall Matt Melzer’s excellent post comparing Spain and California from July 2008, and showing just where demand for the initial, wildly successful AVE line from Madrid to Sevilla came from. Melzer offered the following charts:

Notice the population density: almost exactly the same. What’s not noted here: distance between Madrid and Barcelona (386 mi/621 km) is similar to the distance between SF and LA (432 mi/695 km). The geography is very similar as well.

Notice the traffic coming from automobiles and induced demand. HSR deniers like to argue such “induced demand” does not exist, but the AVE indicates it does, both in 1992 when the first line opened and more recently, in 2008 when the Madrid-Barcelona line was finished.

This not only shows that HSR quickly became the dominant mode of transportation on the Madrid-Sevilla route, but that it happened on a route where conventional passenger trains had only a small fraction of the share before the opening of the HSR line.

Now that I think about it, there are a few members of the state legislature who could stand to read both the NYT article and Melzer’s original post, charts included…