HSR Lessons From China
Although most HSR critics and deniers seems to believe that the US is still living in the 1960s where we’re the richest, most innovative country in the world and therefore doesn’t need to feel competitive with anyone else, here in 2010 the reality is that the US could learn from the experiences of other countries, and adopt innovations they have pursued themselves.
One of the best such examples is China’s massive investment in high speed rail, which was the subject of an interesting USA Today article:
The Dec. 26 opening of the high-speed link between south Chinese cities Guangzhou and Wuhan is the latest example of massive state spending to keep China’s economy roaring. The fast-expanding network of high-speed trains is stoking patriotism, too.
“This train is the pride of the Chinese people,” says Hu, 42, the boss of a paper factory, who chose the train over a direct flight home to northeast China.
Why is HSR popular in China? Let’s hear what its riders have to say:
Speed and convenience are paramount for business traveler Zhao Shiquan. The founder of an environmental equipment company, Zhao stopped checking in for a Wuhan flight at Guangzhou airport in late December when a friend suggested the new train.
“I wanted to know which is more convenient, the plane or the train?” says Zhao, settling into his reclinable, first-class seat.
At $110 one way, the train is more expensive than flying because airlines such as China Southern Airlines offer prices as low as $28 to fight the new competitor.
But many people still prefer the trains.
“Planes are often late, and time is vital to a company,” says Zhao, 42, who employs 100 people in his firm in Changsha, a major city en route. “In China, you need to meet people in person to do business, and take clients out for meals, so I often have to travel. High-speed trains could be the answer.”
As was discussed in the comments to yesterday’s post, this is also an issue here in California, where flights to and from SFO are subject to frequent fog-related delays that HSR won’t have to worry about. Not only are planes often late, flying in the US has also become very inconvenient over the last decade, to the point where many travelers would likely welcome an alternative that is comparable, if not superior, in cost and travel time.
There are other reasons why Chinese HSR has done well:
The trains are powered by electricity, so they’re not weighed down by huge engines and hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel. The carriages of the “Harmony” trains running between these two cities bear a smart, plane-like appearance, with restrooms far larger than their airborne counterparts.
Attendants dressed like air stewards push trolleys of snacks, including beer and peanuts, down aisles that are patrolled by two armed, uniformed policemen.
The dining car, usually a noisy focus of days-long Chinese rail journeys, appears a zone of quiet. Only microwaved Chinese dishes and fast food such as beefburgers, at $1.30 each, are available.
So it seems like a comfortable, modern way to travel, which counts for a lot in a country whose extensive rail network often left a lot to be desired to the traveler. Of course, the debate about whether HSR is worth the cost is one that is happening in China, just as it is over here:
The focus on infrastructure, and failure to raise incomes, has created a “lopsided development model,” that may leave China as “an emerging market economy without emerging consumers,” worried You Nuo in the state-run China Daily.
The cost of building high-speed tracks, at $20.1 million per mile, is money well spent, counters Qian Lixin, a veteran rail expert at the China Academy of Railway Sciences in Beijing.
“China has met many difficulties in construction, and gained experience in building railroads at low cost. But American railways are owned by individuals, not the government, so investment is the biggest problem,” Qian says.
You’s argument is not that different from Larry Summers, who doesn’t believe sustainable infrastructure helps create jobs or consumers. Both You and Summers are simply wrong. The HSR projects helped to tide over China’s large class of construction workers, ensuring they were able to keep consuming during a global slowdown. That meant lasting investment and greater prosperity for workers across the country. Further, the existence of fast, electrified trains will help reduce China’s dependence on imported oil, meaning that as peak oil begins to bite even harder in the coming years, Chinese workers won’t see more of their paychecks going to buy oil. Of course, it would help if China were to develop more sustainable and renewable sources of electricity to power the trains.
Unfortunately, USA Today also gave space to let anti-train zealot Randall O’Toole rant against HSR, without telling readers his work has been funded by oil companies:
“Transportation works best if you use markets, not subsidies by government,” says Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who researches transportation and urban planning.
“High-speed rail is an obsolete technology that requires huge subsidies in France, Japan and China. Our government seems to view trains as a form of social engineering that they think is better than driving or flying,” he says. “Everybody will pay for these new rail lines through taxes, but only a few people will use them.”
O’Toole says high-speed rail here will just transfer wealth from airline owners to train owners, at great expense to taxpayers as contracts go to the politically connected. He also rejects the argument that trains are more convenient because they deliver people into the heart of cities instead of to airports outside of cities.
“Less than 8% of all jobs in the U.S. are located in the downtown of our cities,” he says.
What a bunch of bullshit.
American transportation is largely government-run (look at our roads) and it works just fine. Our roads are subsidized and nobody seems to complain much, even here in Orange County where new freeway lanes were paid for by sales taxes. HSR in France and Japan requires public funding to build but not to operate, but O’Toole lies to the USA Today reporter about this and makes it sound like the train operations need subsidy, which they don’t.
This notion of “transferring wealth” is just ridiculous. It’s as if O’Toole were advocating in 1910 that government should subsidize the candlemaking and horse-and-buggy industries and not fund any new roads so as to protect those existing owners. It’s just nonsense, and it’s a sign of how little regard our media gives to facts that they let this get printed.
In any case, as with most HSR systems, once people ride the trains, they see the value and become regular customers:
At the end of the line, businessman Zhao considers his trial run a success, and vows to return.
“I feel very proud, as China now has the fastest train in the world. On average incomes, we remain far behind the West, and it’s very hard to catch up,” he says. “But in some areas we are very advanced.”
Stories like Zhao’s will become commonplace here in California at the end of this decade, as long as we don’t let ourselves get distracted by the critics and ensure that we get HSR built as planned.
only 8% of jobs are downtown? as opposed to the huge number of jobs located at airports….
I guess they just put all the huge office towers downtown for looks.
Marcus Reply:
February 10th, 2010 at 7:22 am
The statement is worded very carefully to be accurate. “Less than all jobs in the US”, so it’s including people who live in rural areas or smaller communities.
Either way, it’s true that many jobs are outside downtown in suburban office parks. However, transportation systems are generally designed to get people downtown easily. Furthermore, with a train, you can have stops in the outlying areas, so even if Union Station is not convenient, maybe Sylmar will be. With an airport either you’re near it or you’re not, chances are, unless you work in the airline industry, you’re not.
@jimsf
Unfortunately a lot of downtown towers exist for looks. In many cities these towers are surrounded by empty blocks of surface parking. In many downtowns, the major employers are government institutions. Current development policies favor greenfield suburban office parks because of lower taxes, free parking, etc.
As to social engineering, the current freeway-based policies social engineered Americans into driving. The Chinese are still pretty much in favor of trains for intercity travel since the government, who owns all the rail lines, never let the rail network to deteriorate like American railroads.
I don’t think China is a very good model for US rail, for the following reasons:
1. Chinese HSR is designed as a premium product marketed to the rich, unlike Japanese or European HSR, or future American HSR. Even the Acela isn’t quite as premium-rate; its pricing is competitive with the air shuttles.
2. China can easily ram straight rail ROW through cities, demolishing many buildings in the process, and allowing it to maintain top speed for nearly the entire way. Average speed on the new Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR is 320 km/h, increasing the range of HSR.
3. Chinese construction costs are lower due to lower wages.
Andre Peretti Reply:
February 8th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Those whose houses were demolished and complained about the ridiculously low compensation ended up in jail.
In our countries, the longest phase of any project is the public debate. In China, this phase doesn’t even exist. Everything is shovel-ready from day one.
To low wages you can add technology cheaply acquired from European and Japanese firms.
Francis Reply:
February 9th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
There are some famous ‘Nail Houses’, people who refuse to sell or move:
http://deputy-dog.com/2009/06/6-extraordinarily-stubborn-nail-houses.html
Chinese ones are towards the bottom.
I want the HSR but China is not the best example. China is able to get huge projects like this completed because of their authoritarian government. There is no environmental review like here and there is no public debate. When the Chinese government says they want something built, like the Three Gorges Dam, then it gets built whether people like it or not.
China got its ways not necessarily just because of authoritarian government, but rather China is building its HSR lines like Americans built freeways back in the 50s and 60s. Americans were not that much more authoritarian back then.
Which big American downtowns these days aren’t walled and separated by freeways. The same laws that slow down new freeways apply to HSR also.
Some of O’Toole’s arguments might be put down to intellectual laziness – not looking further once finding a source, no matter how incomplete or obsolete, that leads in the desired direction.
However, the argument about “Transportation works best if you use markets” is trying to pass off the lie and widespread misconception that road and air transport “work through markets” by implication, since actually saying it would mean being caught in a bald-faced lie.
Everytime the Aviation Trust Fund falls short for the operating budget of the FAA, its topped up from the General Fund, while the entire “private” truck freight industry lives off of cross-subsidies from urban drivers paying highway gas taxes.
Andre Peretti Reply:
February 8th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
O’Toole and other “experts” know how to truncate data so as to retain only the part that proves their point. That way, if you check their facts, you find them accurate. They don’t lie, they just omit.
This is an example of one of their statements (not literally quoted):
“France has seen a dramatic increase in airline ridership since the TGV was launched. ”
If you check, you’ll find that accurate and conclude that HSR is a complete failure in France. And, of course, if it failed there, it will fail anywhere.
Now, if our expert had been honest he would have cited the complete facts:
“France has seen a dramatic increase in airline ridership, except in corridors served by HSR where they have been unable to compete”.
HSR opponents sometimes tell the truth, but never the whole truth.
@Andy Chow I am not sure what the environmental and eminent domain laws were like back in the 50s. Which means you shouldn’t be comparing to the 50s anyways. But my guess is that even in the 50s, there were specific environmental impact and eminent domain laws that were much more stringent than what China has today. No, China’s HSR project does not compare to the 50s interstate building. Another point against yours is that the US was less densely populated in the 50s which made it easier to build the interstates. While China today is very densely populated. And yet in spite of that density, China is able to ram through these projects.
So your example of the 50s highway program actually goes to support your point even less.
Peter Reply:
February 8th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
There were eminent domain laws in the 1950s, but essentially no environmental laws.
O’Toole is such a con-man. If you examine his quotes you will see that he doesn’t put his words as an opinion, but as fact. I did not know O’Toole was a magic man and could tell the future. He states his opinions as if “that’s what’s going to happen” and that’s that. It’s disgusting what he gets away with and I can’t beleive how much paper or cyberspace they waste on his bullshit words.
BTW, that link to O’Tools orginization “Cato” is interesting. He has a lot of Oil Companies, Auto Companies, and an Airline or two to look after. But I’m sure the deniers think he’s fair and balanced.
Peter Reply:
February 8th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Like Fox News.
Aside from Comparing the U.S from China like most of you, that’s not the point. The point is the experience involved with HSR. Not so much that we should invest $600B just because China did. The point is that like most people, Speed and Convinience is what will makes any transportation option a usable one. If anybody has Speed and Convinience in mind it’s California’s HSR Plan.
I Never fly unless I have to. I used to drive from Long Beach every weekend up to the East-Bay Area for two years. I had to get used to it, but I never flew, because I hate flying. I also didn’t take Amtrak because it wasn’t convinient for me and of course nothing beat doing 80-90mph on I-5 at night. Anyway, the point is that if I had HSR available to me I would jump on it immediately, because it would be convinient and FAST. No more driving for me!
Even if the HSR Train was $105, the plane was $60 and driving was $45, I would still pick the train because I can do a lot of things and not having to drink energy drinks, pills and sodas to keep me awake on the Freeway. Not only that, I will not be panicking every time the airplane hit’s turbulence and I have to pray that my body makes it in one piece & doesn’t burn up on impact after we crash.
I’ve just wanted to thank Robert for all the hard work and dedication you do to keep information flowing, to try to keep the BS in check, and in support of a more livable future. I studied in Europe in college and it was so nice travelling on schedule between city centers. We should be about choices. Americans who havent enjoyed convenient train transportation are clinging with white knuckles to the trajectory of ever more freeway lanes and imported oil.
From the Mercury News and other Bay Area papers:
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14360167?
Menlo Park, Atherton will try to reopen high-speed rail lawsuit
Menlo Park, Atherton and four environmental groups that sued the California High-Speed Rail Authority said Monday they will file a petition to reopen the case based on recently revealed ridership figures.
……………..
Joey Reply:
February 8th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
I wouldn’t anticipate much success.
huh? did someone say there would be chinese food on board hsr? sweet.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
February 9th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Dim Sum carts going up and down the aisle!
An interesting, slightly non-scientific study of facebook friend relationships seems to reinforce some of the “mega region” studies done elsewhere.
Interesting tidbits: LA acts as a central hub for California perhaps more than other studies have indicated. Dallas and Hotlanta are hubs for their respective regions, and the northeast is very cliquish, and people don’t move around (or at least friend/sleep around) as much as Californians.
jimsf Reply:
February 9th, 2010 at 10:46 am
so easterners and cliquish and uptight, and californians are slutty and flighty. sounds about right.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
February 9th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Or Easterners, have more actual friends and don’t have the need to make “friends” with everybody who says hello to them on Facebook.
AndyDuncan Reply:
February 9th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Zing.
Of course, they’re looking at makeup of friends, not number of friends. It’s interesting either way, even if we don’t know what it says exactly about travel habits.
If anything it might be an interesting indicator of latent demand – for example these are the places that people in these areas have reason to travel. At least for (semi)personal relationships.
China’s HSR is NOT designed as a premium product marketed to the rich. The railway in China had been losing market shares to air flights and highway over the last decades due to its slow speed and poor service. The Chinese Ministry of Railway had increased the average rail travel speed six time since 1997 to compete with air flights and highway from about 50 kph to 120-200 kph on the existing lines. At the beginning, the quasi- high speed services had got a lot of complaints from the passengers who had been used to the subsidized, extremely low fares. But all these fast trains have become very popular and proven successful later.
The biggest reason is, of course, that Chinese economy has been growing rapidly and people in general are getting wealthier and demanding better and faster train service. It has to be noted that in the last decades, air travel and expressway passenger traffic have increased tremendously while train travel has been relatively stagnated.
In fact, the cost of a lot of intercity travels on expressway are often much more expensive than train service and comparable in many cases to the new HSRs. The new HSR are grabbing passengers from highway buses and air flights, at least in the short- to medium- haul. From the experience of the few newly operational HSR routes in the last year or so, HSRs have been remarkably competitive to the highway buses and airlines, as have been reported widely.
The notion that China can just “ram straight rail ROW through cities, demolishing many buildings in the process” is rather simplistic and misleading.
The reasons it’s relatively easier for China to get the land to build HSR are:
1. Almost all lands in China are either state-owned or collectively-owned (by the village for example) in theory, all people are entitled to the right to use the land where they live or farm
2. The residents or land-owners (e.g., townships) are entitled to fair and reasonable compensation based on market price if the lands are employed. In the cities, the affected residents may be offered to relocate to new apartments and/or get compensation. There are instances where the local governments and the residents/land-owners could not agree on a fair compensation and this may lead to delay to the projects. For instance, the Wuhan-Guangzhou line had been delayed for several months around Guangzhou at the cost of RMB tens of million per day. The mayor had to negotiate in person with the residents to come to a resolution.
3. The labor cost may be low, but the land acquisition cost is getting expensive quickly especially in big cities. The cost of building metros, for example, is getting staggering. Less than a decade ago, one kilometer of underground metro in Beijing cost about RMB 100 million, today it’s anywhere from RMB 500 million to RMB 800 million. Last year, the highest compensation amount to one resident in central Beijing was about RMB 90 million! This is also one of the reasons that the new HSR stations are usually built in suburbs, not ram through the cities. Subways, obviously, do not have the choice. This is one more reason to roll out and national HSR quickly lest it’ll get even more expensive.
Alon Levy Reply:
February 10th, 2010 at 8:54 am
If you look at the cost of subway relative to living costs, Beijing is much less expensive than peer cities in Europe and Asia. RMB exchanges at 4 to the dollar in PPP, so the cost is $125-200 million per km. It’s getting higher, but not by that much, because of inflation and wage increases . Ten years ago, the accepted PPP estimate for China was 2 RMB to the dollar, or $50 million per km. The increase in real costs since is on par with the increase in Chinese real incomes. Once incomes converge to first world levels, the cost will end up being about the same as in Europe and Japan.
This is another oft-repeated misconception about China. While it’s true that it’s easier to get large public infrastructure projects rolling in China than in the west due to the development stage and the strong government and public preference to development, China’s planning and developing HSR has been cautious, deliberate and methodical.
China’s high-speed rail dream dated back much early to Deng Xiaoping’s famous ride on Japan’s bullet train in 1978 when he visited Japan. Since the early 1990’s, there had been a nation-wide, heated debate on what kind of high-speed rail technology should China adopt to build its upcoming national high-speed rail network: mag-lev or conventional. The Ministry of Railway is in the conventional camp. The all-important Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail was postponed again and again due to the debate.
Unable to make a decision, the central government decided to work with Germany to build an experimental mag-lev line to gain experience and to develop more indigenous mag-lev technologies to reduce the cost. Former premier Zhu Rongji visited Germany and rode on Germany’s experimental mag-lev line. Shanghai was willingly selected as the test site. The Shanghai Mag-Lev line started construction in 2003 and was completed in 2004. In the end, it turned out that mag-lev is too expensive to build and operate; plus Germany refused to transfer more technologies.
In 2004, the State Council approved the Mid- and Long-Term Railway Plan. In 2005, the Ministry of Railway started to build the Wuhan-Guangzhou and Zhengzhou-Xian high-speed rails (all 350 km/h railway), both are national trunk lines that have become operational recently. In April 2008, construction of the high-profile Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail started and Premier Wen Jiabao attended the ground-breaking ceremony. The debate between mag-lev and conventional high-speed rail technologies was thus settled.
The HSRs were not created as stimulus projects to deal with the economic crisis. Instead, the economic crisis accelerated the building of the HSR network, probably by five years (2015 vs. 2020). As discussed above, a lot of the HSR lines are almost shovel-ready at the time.
Thanks to Randal the Tool, for disproving your own point.
8% of jobs are downtown, which is a concentrated area. Meanwhile, (assuming only about 5% of jobs are located in rural areas) 87% of jobs are located in smaller cities or less dense suburbs surrounding downtowns, of which for each city there are usually something like 300 or 400 examples. Which leaves less than 1% of total jobs in a region in any one particular neighborhood or suburb outside of downtowns (on average), while downtowns have 8% of the jobs, which is about 15 times as many jobs as any one suburb. NOW do you understand why transit goes there?
Care to comment, Randal?
@Tornadoes28
This is another oft-repeated misconception about China. While it’s true that it’s easier to get large public infrastructure projects rolling in China than in the west due to the development stage and the strong government and public preference to development, China’s planning and developing HSR has been cautious, deliberate and methodical.
China’s high-speed rail dream dated back much early to Deng Xiaoping’s famous ride on Japan’s bullet train in 1978 when he visited Japan. Since the early 1990’s, there had been a nation-wide, heated debate on what kind of high-speed rail technology should China adopt to build its upcoming national high-speed rail network: mag-lev or conventional. The Ministry of Railway is in the conventional camp. The all-important Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail was postponed again and again due to the debate.
Unable to make a decision, the central government decided to work with Germany to build an experimental mag-lev line to gain experience and to develop more indigenous mag-lev technologies to reduce the cost. Former premier Zhu Rongji visited Germany and rode on Germany’s experimental mag-lev line. Shanghai was willingly selected as the test site. The Shanghai Mag-Lev line started construction in 2003 and was completed in 2004. In the end, it turned out that mag-lev is too expensive to build and operate; plus Germany refused to transfer more technologies.
In 2004, the State Council approved the Mid- and Long-Term Railway Plan. In 2005, the Ministry of Railway started to build the Wuhan-Guangzhou and Zhengzhou-Xian high-speed rails (all 350 km/h railway), both are national trunk lines that have become operational recently. In April 2008, construction of the high-profile Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail started and Premier Wen Jiabao attended the ground-breaking ceremony. The debate between mag-lev and conventional high-speed rail technologies was thus settled.
The HSRs were not created as stimulus projects to deal with the economic crisis. Instead, the economic crisis accelerated the building of the HSR network, probably by five years (2015 vs. 2020). As discussed above, a lot of the HSR lines are almost shovel-ready at the time.
PBS has a show (Blueprint America) about transportation and high speed rail.
Still waiting for a recording of the Board meeting last week. Anybody have any ideas on how to access this? I’ve called CHSRA several times – they keep saying ‘a couple days’…
This was quite unintentionally amusing given the sorry state of median incomes in California right now. Hopefully the train will change that!
Francis Reply:
February 11th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Hey welcome!
Greg, excellent posts. I think in terms of gauging the applicability of China’s rail experience to our own, it’s also worth pointing out that, while our environmental and property rights laws are stronger than in China, we have our own advantages in terms of having relatively few practical barriers to HSR development. Though we have big cities that are often fairly close together, our rural areas are sparsely populated by Chinese or even European standards, and therefore potential rights of way are not very obstructed. Additionally, our existing railroad and highway rights of way are in many cases wide enough to accommodate HSR lines anyway. The typical existing railroad right of way in Illinois is 100 feet wide, for (usually) a single track that is straight and on flat land. Outside the towns along the way, property condemnation isn’t even an issue — just the highway over/underpasses. You just put the HSR in that existing right of way, parallel to the existing track. Try finding that in Europe or China.
DBX, I like your positive attitude and thinking. I’ve seen too many Americans negativism and excuses on HSRs here in the States. The US doesn’t need to emulate China to build a nation-wide high-speed network due to population density and existing community and infrastructure, but there are numerous corridors in the country where it makes sense to build a regional network. The excuses that we’ve often heard about HSR’s economic feasibility and the American’s supposedly love-affair of the “freedom of road” to me are just that, excuses. Most Americans who have had ridden on HSR overseas love the experience. The economic feasibility, frankly, is a chicken-and-egg thing. If you never build a HSR, most people won’t even have the chance to try the experience? I think sometimes you just need that can-do attitude (did anyone accurately predict the traffic volumes for the Interstate Highway System?).
I’d really like to see California’s HSR dream comes true, since it’s the only real HSR planned in the US (all others are just “fake” high-speed rails). Once built, people from the rest of the country will have the opportunity to experience the real high-speed rail and the enthusiasm will inevitably be contagious.
I guess I’ve touched on some of the the intangibles of building HSR: the attitude, the experience and the enthusiasm, which given that most people in this country don’t use railway for travel and the sunk cost of the existing community and infrastructure, are as important as the hard, cold numbers.
To the extent railway travel has been far more familiar experience to ordinary Chinese, it has always been a not-so-pleasant travel experience for most Chinese due to its low-speed, poor service and crowdedness. It was not until the 350 kmh HSR between Beijing and Tianjin became operational right before the Beijing Olympics in 2008 that people’s interest in and enthusiasm about HSR had been aroused. The Beijing-Tianjin HSR had since become a showcase for the Ministry of Railway where people around the country and, indeed, from the world came to experience the HSR (including Nancy Pelosi). The magnificent Beijing South Railway Station, completed along with Beijing-Tianjin HSR, was rated by Beijingers as the No.1 in the list of Beijing’s landmark buildings above such iconic buildings such as Bird’s Nest, WaterCube, Grand National Theater and Beijing Capital Airport Terminal 3. Both the Beijing-Tianjin and Beijing South Railway Station have opened people’s eyes and changed the perceptions of rail travel in China. The HSR craze has thus spread to the provinces and the rest of the country. Now it is the local governments that are approaching the Ministry of Railway to pitch their favorite HSR lines. It is hard to believe, in the last decade or so after the Asian financial crisis, the obsession of most local governments in China had been to build expressways and China has the second longest expressway system in the world after the US interstate highways by the end of last year (65,000 km vs. 75,000 km).
Californian has the opportunity to lead the US into the HSR era. It has the most comprehensive vision, the best planning far ahead of other states and it’s the real high-speed rail. Forget about China, think about Spain, whose HSR I had the opportunity to ride and was very impressed. It has similar size, similar population, but has a very ambitious HSR plan. It’s a good example for California.
if i were a governor of California, or the president, I would raise the taxes on gasoline/petroleum to 222% or even higher, much like in the United Kingdom – but both for cars and aircrafts and use the revenues as subsidies for the Rail services. I am sure that will happen in 50 years or so, but people are just not ready for that yet i guess… :?
From today’s New York Times: “China’s Project to Build Fast Trains Is Spurring Growth:”
WUHAN, China — The world’s largest human migration — the annual crush of Chinese traveling home to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which is this Sunday — is going a little faster this time thanks to a new high-speed rail line.
The Chinese bullet train, which has the world’s fastest average speed, connects Guangzhou, the southern coastal manufacturing center, to Wuhan, deep in the interior. In a little more than three hours, it travels 664 miles, comparable to the distance from Boston to southern Virginia. That is less time than Amtrak’s fastest train, the Acela, takes to go from Boston just to New York.
Even more impressive, the Guangzhou to Wuhan train is just one of 42 high-speed lines recently opened or set to open by 2012 in China. By comparison, the United States hopes to build its first high-speed rail line by 2014, an 84-mile route linking Tampa and Orlando, Fla.
…
The rest of the report can be read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/business/global/13rail.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Here is another report from Bloomberg about the competition that Chinese airlines are facing from HSR:
‘Invincible’ High-Speed Trains Steal China Southern’s Customers
Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) — China Southern Airlines Co., the nation’s largest carrier, and Air China Ltd. are slashing prices to compete with the country’s new high-speed trains in a battle that Europe’s airlines have largely already ceded.
Competition from trains that can travel at 350 kilometers per hour (217 miles per hour) is forcing the carriers to cut prices as much as 80 percent at a time when they are already in a round of mergers to lower costs. Passengers choosing railways over airlines will also erode a market that Boeing Co. and Airbus SAS are banking on to provide about 13 percent of plane sales over the next 20 years.
“There’s no doubt that high-speed rail will defeat airlines on all the routes of less than 800 kilometers,” said Citigroup Inc. analyst Ally Ma. “The airlines must get themselves in shape, increase their profitability and improve the network.”
China Southern cut economy-class tickets to 140 yuan ($21) from 700 yuan on flights between Guangzhou and Changsha after a high-speed train started on the route in December. The trip now takes 2 1/2 hours by train instead of 9.
“The high-speed train is invincible on this route,” said Tom Lin, 30, a civil servant in Guangzhou, who opted to travel by rail. “There’s no doubt it’s more convenient for trips to the cities along the line. Airlines can’t compete with trains for the spacious seats.”
Nationwide, China’s railways will likely handle 210 million journeys during the on-going 40-day spring festival travel period, as migrant workers head home for the Lunar New Year holidays, according to the official People’s Daily.
…
The rest of the report can be read here: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-10/-invincible-high-speed-trains-steal-china-southern-s-customers.html