In this paper, several critical issues related to Chinese high-speed rails (CHSR) are analyzed, investigated and discussed, including development background, reasons for high ticket fare, some typical factors that influence the environmental life-cycle assessment, time and cost comparison of typical door-to-door travel routes between different transport modes and complementary strategies among different transport modes. First, the results show that the expanding high-speed rail network increased the pressure on the country's roads in the 2010 spring festival rush period due to the high ticket fare of CHSR. Second, due to lower than expected ridership because of the high ticket price and limited demand in less developed areas, some Chinese CHSR projects have become economically unsustainable. Third, without sufficient ridership and service life, the utilization of HSR was unable to show any advantages in the environmental impact compared with the other transport modes. In addition, the impact of shock from CHSR on Chinese domestic civil airlines is evident when the travel distance is below 1050 km. The key objective of the investigation is to enhance our understanding of the development and operation of Chinese high-speed rail. One of the key contributions of the current paper is the presented suggestions for complementary strategies between different transport modes to make full use of Chinese transportation resources to promote low carbon economy.
Chinese high-speed rail (CHSR) refers to any commercial train service in China with an average speed of 200 km/h or higher [
One of the main purposes of developing such an extensive CHSR project is to reduce the gap between the large social transportation demand and the relatively limited capacity of the railway network during holidays, especially the Chinese Spring Festival. The Spring Festival, which is also named Lunar New Year, is the most important traditional Chinese festival. Many Chinese people travel from their places of work and study to reunite with their families during this festival, resulting in the Spring Festival Travel Rush. According to the official press release, during the 40-day Spring Festival Travel period in 2010, approximately 640 million people were expected to join in the largest annual human migration in the world. Previous data showed that passenger journeys totaled 1.66 billion during the Spring Festival Travel period in 2001, 1.9 billion in 2005 and 2.2 billion in 2010 [
Three major reasons may explain this congestion. Firstly, China is the most populated country in the world. Its population has increased to approximately 1.34 billion, as estimated by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics [
To alleviate the traffic congestion by mobilizing people as quickly as possible, the need for high-speed rails in China has increased. Through six rounds of “speed-up” campaigns from April 1997 to April 2007, 7700 km of the existing tracks were upgraded to reach 160 km/h, 3002 km to reach 200 km/h and 423 km to reach 250 km/h [
Despite the improved capacity of the China railway system after 5149 km of high-speed rails were put into service in 2009, the rapidly expanding high-speed rail network increased the pressure on the country’s
roads in the 2010 spring festival rush period [
Another example is the 10-day, 62-mile traffic jam in the northwest of Beijing in August 2010 [
While pushing some budget-conscious passengers to road transport, the high-speed railways have also split the market share of medium-or-short distance travel from airlines. For example, the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway (WG HSR) via Changsha has ferried 20.6 million passengers in the year since its opening in December 2009 [
From the examples stated above, it is obvious that CHSR expansion can increase the railway transport volume and mobilize passengers more quickly. However, this expansion is unable to alleviate the burden of road transport due to the unaffordable CHSR fares for most of the budget-conscious conventional rail riders. Even worse, the burden will become more serious if the frequency of the conventional rails is decreased due to the operation of CHSR. Because the CHSR transport mode is unable to alleviate the traffic congestion encountered in China due to its high ticket fare, it is necessary to investigate feasible measures or alternative transport modes that may solve this puzzle. First, the reasons for the high ticket fares of CHSR are discussed in the second section. In the third section, the environmental impacts of different transportation modes are discussed. In the fourth section, typical door-to-door travel routes are selected to compare time and cost between the CHSR transport mode and air transportation mode. In the fifth section, complementary strategies between the air and CHSR transportation modes are put forward.
The CHSR cost structure includes internal and external costs. The internal costs are mainly divided into three types, HSR infrastructure constructing costs, operation costs and maintenance costs. According to Campos [
The HSR operation cost involves two parts. The first part refers to the purchasing cost of the rolling stocks and trains utilized. The second part includes costs of the labor, energy and other material consumed by the day-to-day operations of the guide ways, rolling stock and equipment, terminals and stations, ticket sales systems, signaling systems, traffic management and safety systems. The HSR maintenance costs refer to the maintenance costs of HSR infrastructure and rolling stocks, including labor cost and costs of energy and material consumption.
On average, the per-kilometer infrastructure building costs of a high-speed line with a designed speed of 300 km per hour is approximately three times higher than a conventional railway line in China [
To support the CHSR rail infrastructure, the total amount of debt held by the Chinese Ministry of Railways reached 1.8 trillion RMB (0.28 trillion US$) in 2011. According to the report of China Minsheng Bank Corp., Ltd., the peak period for the Chinese Ministry of Railways to repay the loan and interest is in 2014 [
To break the cost even, high ticket fares and high ridership are essential. The most crowded CHSR, Wuhan-Guangzhou (WG CHSR) intercity line, can be used as an example. According to the feasibility report, given that the ticket fare is invariable, at least an 8% continuous increase in ridership per year is needed to recover the total cost in ten years [
Redundant construction in CHSR projects is another critical factor that limits the increase of ridership on existing CHSR lines in the long run, making it more difficult to recover the costs. For example, as shown in the map in figure 2 [
Therefore, to make full use of the existing resources, a high-speed line should have been built to connect Tianjin and Nanjin after the Beijing-Tianjin (Jing-Jin) CHSR and Shanghai-Nanjin (Hu-Ning) CHSR were constructed. In this way, the Jing-Hu CHSR could share Jing-Jin and Hu-Ning CHSR, which could save the repeated construction cost approximately 64.7 billion RMB. Ironically, the Beijing-Shang CHSR was planned and constructed separately, overlooking the existence of Jing-Jin CHSR and Hu-Ning CHSR. The consequence is that the ridership of Jing-Jin CHSR was diverted by Jing-Hu CHSR because passengers can either travel from Beijing to Tianjin through the one-stop Jing-Jin CHSR or travel through Jing-Hu CHSR and get off at the Tianjin station. Similarly, the ridership of Hu-Ning CHSR was affected by Jing-Hu CHSR. Thus, the repeated construction in some part of Jing-Hu CHSR not only costs more in infrastructure investment but also pushes the three high-speed rails stated above into cut-throat competition.
In conclusion, ridership is the essential factor that determines whether the CHSR is economically sustainable. The high costs of infrastructure construction, operation and maintenance fees urge the Chinese Rail Ministry to implement a high ticket fare strategy. However, lower than expected ridership due to the high ticket price and limited demand in less developed areas has made some CHSR projects economically unsustainable.
Automobiles, conventional trains, high-speed trains and civil aircrafts are the four common transport modes for domestic city-to-city travel. Concerning the advantages and disadvantages of these modes, in addition to internal cost such as building, operation and maintenance cost, external cost is an essential criterion in providing a fair appraisal. External cost, also named environmental cost, includes energy consumption, air pollution harmful to human health and emission contributing to global warming, land take, barrier effects, visual intrusion, noise, etc. [
In addition to the ridership, service life is an important factor in assessing the life-cycle environment im-pact. As the service life of a transport mode increases, the mode’s impact on the environment decreases. Con
Transport Modes | At Low Occupancy (20%) | At Middle Occupancy (50%) | At High Occupancy (100%) |
---|---|---|---|
High-Speed Rail | 3.55 | 1.42 | 0.71 |
Conventional Trains | 3.60 | 1.44 | 0.72 |
Automobiles | 4.20 | 1.68 | 0.84 |
Civil Aircrafts | 7.30 | 2.92 | 1.46 |
cerning the HSR infrastructure, land subsidence is one of the main factors in shortening its service life. For example, due to the over-pumping of underground water, the Taiwan high-speed rail (THSR) route between Yunlin county and Changhua county is now suffering from land subsidence [
Another example of the negative effect of land subsidence is Chinese Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan CHSR [
The impact of CHSR on conventional rail and medium/long-distance coaches is minor because most of the Chinese budget-conscious passengers are reluctant to pay the high ticket fare of CHSR. The night conventional train services with hard sleeper facilities seem to be more competitive than the high-speed train service because the former can save the passenger the hotel charge for one night. For example, if a manger plans to travel by train from Beijing to the capital city Liaoning Province Shenyang (distance 705 km) and attend the next day’s business conference, two types of train services are available, the conventional train service and the high-speed train service. The former service is the one-night train service that departs at ten p.m. and arrives at eight a.m. the next day. The hard sleeper ticket fare for this service is 183 RMB. The latter service is the high-speed train service that departs at six pm and arrives at eleven pm. The typical seat ticket fare for this service is 217 RMB. Overall, the one-night conventional train service is more economical because it can not only reduce the ticket cost but also save the passenger the hotel rate for one night.
The shock from CHSR on Chinese domestic civil airlines is evident, as a large portion of the CHSR ridership is diverted from the domestic air routes. The factors that lead passengers to switch from air to CHSR include cost, time, comfort, accessibility and convenience. To analyze the impact of these factors on the competing relationship between CHSR and Chinese domestic civil airlines, two typical door-to door routes are selected as examples. In one example, a traveler is planning a journey from Wuhan City Center-Donghu CBD to Guangzhou City Center-Beijing Road, whose distance is approximately 1069 km. Two major travel modes, by CHSR or by air, are available. Before calculating and comparing the total time and cost resulting from the choice of different transport modes, several assumptions and definitions are made, as below:
1) To complete this door-to door journey, the total time is divided into five segments, in which Time A defines the access time from the city center to CHSR station (airport), Time B defines the average boarding time, Time C defines the time in vehicle, Time D defines the time for baggage claim, and Time E defines the egress time from CHSR station (airport) to the city center.
2) Circumstances such as delay and traffic congestion are neglected.
3) Taxi was chosen as the transport mode between the city center and CHSR station (airport), whose time and cost during access and egress was estimated through the following website: http://ditu.baidu.com.
4) In table 2, surplus fees include an airport construction fee and bunker surcharge.
The time and cost comparison for this journey is shown in table 2 and table 3, respectively [
Travel Mode | Time A | Time B | Time C | Time D | Time E | Total Time |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
By CHSR | 43 m | 30 m | 3 h 16 m | 0 | 1 h 11 m | 5 h 40 m |
By Air | 1 h 12 m | 40 m - 1 h 30 m | 1 h 35 m | 0 - 20 m | 51 m | 4 h 18 m - 5 h 28 m |
Travel Mode | Ticket fare (Economic Class) | Surplus Fee* | Taxi Fee | Total Fee |
---|---|---|---|---|
By CHSR | 75.38 (US$) | 0 | 19 (US$) | 94.38 (US$) |
By Air | 132.3 (US$) | 24.7(US$) | 24.6 (US$) | 181.6 (US$) |
equal total fare with the mode of CHSR travel, the air ticket fare must reduce to 35% of the original price, from 75.38 US$ to 45.08 US$, which seems to be unacceptable to the airlines in the long term. Therefore, anticipating the strong competition from Wuhan-Guangzhou CHSR, the number of flights between these two cities has decreased from more than twenty to nine per day and the average air ticket fare is only 40% of the original price [
A second example is a journey from Beijing City Center, Tian’anmen Square to Shanghai City Center, The bund, with the distance of approximately 1318 km. The time and cost comparisons between the air and CHSR modes are shown in table 4 and table 5, respectively. As shown in
In addition to time and cost, the factors that affect passengers’ choice between these two modes include comfort, convenience, etc. Concerning the comparison of comfort, the advantage of the air mode includes considerate in-flight service, less in-vehicle time, free meals and drinks and entertainment (free film and music). The advantages of the CHSR mode include wider seat space, more space for carry-on luggage, and no prohibition in cell phone and lap computer use during the entire in-vehicle time. Concerning the convenience, the influence factors include the daily frequency of trains and flights, frequency of delay, and access and egress between the airport or HSR station and downtown. Because a large proportion of the CHSR stations are constructed at peripheral areas to boost the economic development of city outskirts, access and egress between the HSR station and city center are not convenient. The ridership of HSR will be affected unless massive transit systems, such as underground systems, are constructed and conveniently connected between the downtown and CHSR station. In Chinese first-tier cities such as Beijing and some second-tier cities such as Xi’an, a seamless joint between underground and CHSR has become a reality. However, in some second-tier cities such as Suzhou and most third-tier cities such as Yueyang and Taian, there are no plans to build transit systems to connect downtown areas and CHSR in the short term.
In conclusion, the impact of CHSR on air is dependent on the travel distance. Within the distance of 750 kilometers, the CHSR mode has overwhelming advantages compared to the air mode due to its relative lower ticket fare and relative minor increase in total journey time. This has been verified by the fact that the number of flights between Changsha and Guangzhou (746 km) has been cut from an average of 11.5 to five flights per day one year after CHSR began operating along this route [
Type | Time A | Time B | Time C | Time D | Time E | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
By CHSR | 24 m | 30 m | 4 h 48 m - 5 h 30 m | 0 | 20 m | 6 h 02 m - 6 h 44 m |
BY Air | 54 m | 40 m - 1 h 30 m | 2 h 10 m | 0 - 20 m | 35 m | 4 h 19 m - 5 h 29 m |
Type | Ticket fare (Economic Class) | Surplus Fee* | Taxi Fee | Total Fare |
---|---|---|---|---|
By CHSR | 86.7(US$) | 0 | 16.9(US$) | 103.2(US$) |
By Air | 180(US$) | 24.7(US$) | 22.7(US$) | 227.4(US$) |
one hundred kilometers, the time saving of the air mode is evident if passengers check in online with no delay or check-in luggage. In this case, the impact of CHSR on the business-trip market share of air travel is limited due to the valuable time cost. However, the leisure-trip market share of air remains diverted by CHSR due to its relatively lower ticket fare.
To make full use of the transportation resources to promote low carbon economy, the relationship between the CHSR and air mode should be not only competition but also complementary [
1) Precise and comprehensive ridership forecast of CHSR in a specified route should be conducted by the government prior to investing in the construction of a new CHSR infrastructure. As stated by Section 3, with poor ridership, the HSR mode is unsustainable in both economy and environment. Such poor ridership may occur in Chinese western sparsely populated areas. Thus, the market share of these areas should belong to the low cost regional air mode transportation rather than the CHSR mode to avoid cut-throat competition.
2) The newly built CHSR station should be located near the airport or at a location with easy access to the airport through the public transit system, which can contribute to integrating the CHSR network with the air network for seamless transfer conjunction. One example of the advantage of this measure is that travelers can conveniently make the best use of both the short-distance advantage of the HSR mode and the long-distance advantage of the air mode when planning a journey, inducing more ridership for both of these modes.
3) By developing an air-rail combined transportation network, airport resources between the nearby cities could be shared to alleviate air traffic congestion during taking off and landing in Chinese mega cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, which is helpful in reducing flight delays. For example, it is reported the total passenger trip of Beijing International Airport is expected to exceed its design capacity in 2012. To avoid air traffic jams in Beijing after 2012, some flights can be arranged to land in the Binhai Airport, which is located in the nearby city of Tianjin, and then send the passengers to Beijing downtown via the Beijing-Tianjin CHSR.
In this paper, several critical issues related to Chinese high-speed rails were analyzed, investigated and discussed, including the following:
1) Development background―a high-speed rail building boom is occurring in China to alleviate the traffic congestion by mobilizing people as quickly as possible. This system is also expected to get passengers off the conventional rails and allow more freight trains on these rails. However, these goals were not reached due to the high ticket fare.
2) Reasons for high ticket fare―large investment in CHSR and the resultant high debt have urged the Chinese Rail Ministry to implement a high ticket fare strategy. However, due to lower than expected ridership because of the high ticket price and limited demand in less developed areas, some Chinese CHSR projects have become economically unsustainable.
3) Without sufficient ridership and service life, the utilization of HSR is unable to show any advantages in the environment impact compared with the other transport modes.
4) Time and cost comparison of typical door-to-door travel routes between the transport modes―the calculated results and the released data both show that the preferred distance for CHSR is less than 750 kilometers. When the travel distance is between 750 and 1050 kilometers, the shock of CHSR on air travel is evident. At least half of the market share of air travel will be diverted by CHSR unless a deep discount for air tickets is made and good time performance is ensured. When the distance is above 1050 kilometers, the time saving of the air mode is evident. Such time saving is evident if passengers check in online without delay or check-in luggage.
5) Complementary strategies between the air and CHSR modes were put forward to avoid cut-throat competition between the two modes, induce more ridership for both modes and alleviate air traffic congestion.
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grants #51206005 and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. This research was also funded by Beijing Youth Talent Plan.