Some Links on High Speed Rail in China

High Speed Rail (HSR) is major source of discussion today in fields such as Urban Planning, Transportation Engineering, Public Policy and Economics to name a few. Several countries (with the exception of Canada) are currently constructing or expanding their high speed rail networks. China has the world's longest high-speed rail network with 6,920 kilometres (see map) and will expand to 13,000 kilometers within the next three years. This won't be cheap.

Spending billions of Yuan on HSR construction should mean that ticket prices should be high to recover operating and maintenance costs, right? Well, in theory, but prices need to be competitive with airlines otherwise people won't use HSR. This will prove to be a challenge for the Chinese government as they will have to consider a number of incentives such as subsidizing fares to ensure that HSR is affordable for its citizens. Some argue that fares should be high at first to recover revenue to pay for operation and maintenance. An interesting debate indeed.

I blog about this and share links because HSR growth in China will help stabilize the country's greenhouse gas emissions in its transportation sector. It will (over the long-term) decrease demand for airlines services, it will advance China's transportation network, foster a greener ethic in its citizenry (insofar as HSR prices are affordable). The infrastructurist blog writes

"high speed rail has fully infiltrated the population, and it’s only getting bigger — by 2020, there will be HSR lines connecting every Chinese city with more than 500,000 residents, meaning that 90% of the country’s population of 1.3 billion will have HSR access." This is good, but will it be affordable?

To read about HSR competition with airlines, see here.

A blog post on HSR vs airlines in China, see here.

An interesting financial analysis criticizing HSR in China, see here.

For a critical commentary from HSR riders in China, see here.

Key message: HSR has the ability to drastically ameliorate China's national transportation system and significantly cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. It is a very sustainable transportation solution as we have seen in Europe and Japan. However, if tickets prices are too high and made unaffordable, ridership will be low and the billions of Yuan spent on HSR will be seen as a waste of money and hence anger a lot of people. HSR ticket prices need to be comparable (or cheaper) than airline tickets, this will require a lot of work on the policy front.