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.

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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.

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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

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.

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.

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.