China’s bullet trains facilitate market integration and mitigate the cost of megacity growth

[TaiShang]

Train travel reaches first peak in China

BEIJING, Feb. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- Spring Festival is only a few days away, and here in China, the holiday travel rush is in the second day of its peak.

These are the latest pictures from one of Beijing's major railway stations. The three days counting from Sunday are expected to be the busiest for travelers prior to the festival. Regular trains have been the popular choice up until now, but with Chinese New Year's eve just two days away, that's switching to travel by high speed rail.

Yesterday, nearly 8 million trips were made on the railways, a 20 percent increase from last year. 708 trains were added to ease the travel pressure. Spring Festival is China's busiest holiday. Millions of people, including migrant workers and students, head home across vast distances to spend the holiday with their loved ones.

Later in the hour, we'll take you across the country to see how people is celebrating the biggest holiday of the year.

(Source: CNTV.cn)

​

 

[bolo]

I do not know for sure in China. But in Taiwan, I know for fact, many national statistics are not to be seen by normal citizens, let alone by foreigners. Only related government institutions have access to such comprehensive data.

Besides, I am in no urge to justify a Chinese project to a foreigner. As I always say, keep your best ideas for India. And prove they are the best.



This is good. But, in social project, direct monetary gain is only one of the (long-term) goals. What matters more is less quantifiable non-monetary gains.

Like public housing, national highways system or sewage.

Transportation is a basic right which is to be provided by a responsible government. India might be on a different league, as its social development indicators demonstrate.

I have no urge to judge them. And won't be involved in discussion where they attempt to judge us. Their business is theirs. Our business is ours.

Exactly. Chinese should not give a flying **** and need to prove anything to anyone, especially a foreigner.

 

[cirr]

A gang of Japanese reporters and TV crews pay a visit to CNR's Tangshan factory

 

[ahojunk]

2.8 billion trips expected in China during spring festival | CCTV America

2.8 billion trips expected in China during spring festival
January 30, 2015

A total of 2.807 billion trips are expected to be made by Chinese people during the Spring Festival travel rush, according to the Ministry of Transport Thursday.

The number, which excludes trips through public buses and taxi, is 3.4 percent higher than the previous year, said Xu Chengguang, spokesman of the ministry.

The 40-day travel frenzy is known as “Chunyun,” the hectic period surrounding Chinese New Year which falls this year on Feb. 19. Chunyun began on Feb. 4 and will last until March 16.

Several new high-speed railways have been built and put into operation in 2014 that will further help reduce crowds during the travel rush, Xu said. China Railway Corporation earlier this month announced plans to run more trains to cope with the travel rush.

Chinese New Year celebrations, known as Spring Festival, are China’s most important family holiday, with hundreds of millions of people heading to their hometowns to meet with relatives and old friends, putting huge stress on transportation system.

Chinese people have never been more affluent and keen to travel, nor have there ever been more migrant workers in cities far from home. Every year, stress on the transportation system becomes greater and greater, despite great improvements in infrastructure over the last few years.

The transport networks — road, rail, aviation and waterways — have set new highs for “Chunyun” numbers almost every year in the past decade.

Railways are expected to see a rise of 10 percent in passenger trips year on year, a greater rise than any other transport options, official data showed.

This story is compiled with information from Xinhua.
.

 

[TaiShang]

2.8 billion trips expected in China during spring festival | CCTV America

2.8 billion trips expected in China during spring festival
January 30, 2015

View attachment 194378

A total of 2.807 billion trips are expected to be made by Chinese people during the Spring Festival travel rush, according to the Ministry of Transport Thursday.

The number, which excludes trips through public buses and taxi, is 3.4 percent higher than the previous year, said Xu Chengguang, spokesman of the ministry.

The 40-day travel frenzy is known as “Chunyun,” the hectic period surrounding Chinese New Year which falls this year on Feb. 19. Chunyun began on Feb. 4 and will last until March 16.

Several new high-speed railways have been built and put into operation in 2014 that will further help reduce crowds during the travel rush, Xu said. China Railway Corporation earlier this month announced plans to run more trains to cope with the travel rush.

Chinese New Year celebrations, known as Spring Festival, are China’s most important family holiday, with hundreds of millions of people heading to their hometowns to meet with relatives and old friends, putting huge stress on transportation system.

Chinese people have never been more affluent and keen to travel, nor have there ever been more migrant workers in cities far from home. Every year, stress on the transportation system becomes greater and greater, despite great improvements in infrastructure over the last few years.

The transport networks — road, rail, aviation and waterways — have set new highs for “Chunyun” numbers almost every year in the past decade.

Railways are expected to see a rise of 10 percent in passenger trips year on year, a greater rise than any other transport options, official data showed.

This story is compiled with information from Xinhua.
.

HSR is changing the old understandings of how the people think of the nation's geography. In a sense, HSR unites the country even more closely by enabling extended mobilization. That's amazingly forward looking strategy.

 

[lonelyman]

You are extremely narrow minded, just curious u are a vet living in vietnam, why do u care so much and spend time here arguing about China's high speed train.

You sound exactly like Chinese gong zhi, first saying it's a bad investment,waste of tax payers' money,shipping empty chairs, now they are packed and hard to get a ticket and some lines turn into an operating profit, i guess u are on the way to accuse ccp monopoly and making fat profits.

Jokes aside, i can see u are very pro air, but they are not contradictory but complementary, china air market enjoys double digit growth year over year despite hsr competition, it's still boein and air bus biggest market. plus u can not just count direct flight time, most of airports are far from downtown,u easily add 3 or 4 hours trip back and to airport/congestion/security check/delay etc., let alone more space and comfort of train travel.

In a word China is not USA,it make sense to have HSR with high population density. unless u are working for airline interests or have anti ccp agendar, stop this trolling and stubbonness, open ur mind, there are other people want to enjoy this thread.

[QUOTE="BoQ77, post: 5901076, member: 1]

Air is flexible, as long as you completed the airport ... you could add more or remove some flights based on your season demand.more ?[/QUOTE]

who said trains are not?

 

[BoQ77]

You describe me as below:

u are:
- a vet living in vietnam,
- You sound exactly like Chinese gong zhi,
- u are on the way to accuse ccp monopoly and making fat profits.
- i can see u are very pro air,
- u are working for airline interests
- have anti ccp agendar,

Actually, I just mention about this as an example of effective/ineffective public investment.
I'm not dividing which country. but the common in public waste,

 

[TaiShang]

This amazing heat map shows the world’s largest human movement as Chinese New Year begins

Chinese New Year starts on Wednesday, but many people are already hitting the road to return to their hometowns. Each year it results in the world’s largest human migration. China’s top search engine is tracking many of those journeys and has created an amazing, real-time heat map showing the exodus from the major cities. This is the scene right now:

The national holiday – called Spring Festival – officially lasts seven days, but the vast migration occurs over weeks as migrant laborers, factory workers, and students head home first, followed later by office workers. The trip is called chun yun in Chinese, which literally means “spring movement”. Not everyone voyages to their hometown during Chinese New Year, but the migration is still incredible in scale; China’s Ministry of Transport expects people to undertake 2.8 billion trips during this year’s festivities.

Baidu created the Chinese New Year travel heat map for the first time last year. This year it once again uses location-based data from Baidu’s apps, such as Baidu Maps, to highlight the swarm of journeys taking place.

At the time of writing, the heat map shows that most of the movement is of people leaving Shanghai and Shenzhen. Beijing, meanwhile, is seeing the greatest activity when you factor in both incoming and outgoing travelers.

Clicking on Shanghai in the list, the interactive map changes to show (pictured below) orange lines tracking people flowing into Shanghai, while the yellow lines follow the people leaving the city:

 

[BoQ77]

We opposed the map with dashed lines. @Indos @Cossack25A1

 

[TaiShang]

Spring Festival train travel reaches peak

Just two days left until Spring Festival, the most important in China. Millions of people across the country are now making their way back home to celebrate.

Millions of people across the country are now making their way back home to celebrate.

On Sunday nearly 8 million trips were made on the railways, the highest number since the 40-day travel rush period began, and around 7.8 million more trips are expected to be made on the railways on Monday, a 15 percent increase from last year.

Regular trains have been the popular choice so far, but with the Chinese New Year's eve just days away, many are switching to high speed trains to make it home in time. For example, the Beijing South Railway Station, the busiest in China, now has one train arriving or departing every 3 minutes.

 

[bolo]

You are extremely narrow minded, just curious u are a vet living in vietnam, why do u care so much and spend time here arguing about China's high speed train.

You sound exactly like Chinese gong zhi, first saying it's a bad investment,waste of tax payers' money,shipping empty chairs, now they are packed and hard to get a ticket and some lines turn into an operating profit, i guess u are on the way to accuse ccp monopoly and making fat profits.

Jokes aside, i can see u are very pro air, but they are not contradictory but complementary, china air market enjoys double digit growth year over year despite hsr competition, it's still boein and air bus biggest market. plus u can not just count direct flight time, most of airports are far from downtown,u easily add 3 or 4 hours trip back and to airport/congestion/security check/delay etc., let alone more space and comfort of train travel.

In a word China is not USA,it make sense to have HSR with high population density. unless u are working for airline interests or have anti ccp agendar, stop this trolling and stubbonness, open ur mind, there are other people want to enjoy this thread.

[QUOTE="BoQ77, post: 5901076, member: 1]

Air is flexible, as long as you completed the airport ... you could add more or remove some flights based on your season demand.more ?

who said trains are not?[/QUOTE]

BoQ77 is a known troll but Chinese members here, new and old always respond to his dumb questions.

 

[TaiShang]

who said trains are not?

BoQ77 is a known troll but Chinese members here, new and old always respond to his dumb questions.[/QUOTE]

LOL. I see a trend. As the new members get veteran and wiser, they earn to ignore Viets and Indians.


‘Innovation and standardisation’ keep China’s high-speed rail costs low, says World Bank

The cost of high-speed rail (HSR) construction in China is one third lower than in other countries thanks to extensive planning, greater standardisation and the development of “innovative and competitive capacity” in the manufacturing process, a World Bank paper has said.21 Jul 2014
According to the paper, ‘High-speed railways in China: a look at construction costs’ (8-page / 768 KB PDF), by the end of 2013 China had built a HSR network of more than 10,000 route kilometres, “far exceeding that in any other country and larger than the network in the entire European Union”.

The paper said “major factors” influencing construction costs included the line design speed, topography along the alignment, weather conditions, land acquisition costs, use of viaducts instead of embankments and building major bridges across wide rivers.

The construction of ‘mega stations’, which “are frequently built as independent projects” with costs not always included in the HSR project cost, is another key factor, the paper said. Mega stations are traditionally built in the largest cities, and “tend to be large airport-type buildings, with close attention to architecture and local culture”.

Laying track on viaducts is often preferred in China to minimise resettlement and the use of fertile land as well as to reduce environmental impacts, the paper said. “The estimated cost of viaducts in China ranges from 57 million renminbi (CNY) to CNY 73m ($9m to $12m) per km for a double track line. Such costs are kept low through standardisation of the design and manufacturing process for casting and laying bridge beams on viaducts.”

Using figures from China’s ‘People’s Railway Post’, published in January 2014, the paper said the average seat occupancy is 70%. Second class HSR fares vary between $0.045 per km at 200 to 250 km per hour and $0.077 at 300 to 350 km/h. “This is three to four times that on conventional express trains, but this is lower or comparable to discounted air fares and, at the lower end, similar to intercity bus fares. This is about one fourth or one fifth of the fares applied in other HSR countries,” the paper said.

According to the paper: “These trains provide world-class quality of service and comfort. They have carried a large volume of passengers safely, except for one major accident in 2011 that caused about 40 fatalities, attributed to inadequate testing of a new design of signalling equipment, which lacked proper fail-safe features.”

Since 2006, the World Bank has provided financial and technical support for six railway projects in China with speeds of 200 km/h or above.

The bank said in terms of total costs for all projects it has supported in China, civil works contributed about 50% of the cost while signalling, communications and electrification each contributed about 5% of the cost.

The paper said: “HSR construction costs in China tend to be lower than in other countries. Based on experience with World Bank supported projects, the cost of railway construction is about 82% of the total project costs. China HSR, with a maximum speed of 350 km/h, has a typical infrastructure unit cost of about $17m to $21m per kilometre, with a high ratio of viaducts and tunnels. The cost of HSR construction in Europe, having design speed of 300 km/h or above is estimated to be of the order of $25m to $39m per km.”

Earlier this year China announced that foreign investors will have more opportunities to invest in Chinese state projects and state-owned enterprises, including those in the oil, transport and telecoms sectors, as the government pushes the development of a mixed-ownership economy.

According to an April 2014 report in the China Daily, China will invest more than $117 billion in its railway infrastructure this year.

 

[onebyone]

 

[TaiShang]

The photo, taken on Feb. 13, 2015, in south China's Guangzhou train station, shows a four-year-old girl yawning in her grandmother's arm. This is the first time she is riding the train to go back to her parents' hometown in Hunan province. [Photo: Imagine China]

 

[TaiShang]

Rail Modernizations Improve Spring Festival Travel Rush
2015-02-21 Xinhua Web Editor: Wang Wei

Filing past the armed guards, Mr. Yang was pleasantly surprised to find little overcrowding when he arrived at Beijing West Railway Station for his journey home for the Spring Festival.

Like many millions of Chinese, he was making the traditional homecoming to reunite with family for the most important festive occasion in China. Like most of them, he was to find that recent modernizations of the train network and ticketing system have made the travel rush a much smoother, more civilized experience than the notorious ordeal of days gone by.

China's transportation authorities have estimated that almost 300 million people -- about the population of the United States -- will travel by train during the 40 days from Feb 4 to March 16 this year.

However, the advent of high-speed rail has greatly increased capacity, and modern trains have made the travel experience a lot more comfortable.

Also over the past few years in China, train tickets have been put on sale further in advance, online sales platforms have launched, and real-name ticketing has reduced the amount of scalping. Gone are the days when hopeful travelers would sleep on chaotic station concourses, on the off-chance of getting a ticket from massively oversubscribed services.

And so it was that Mr. Yang, who was too shy to give his full name, prepared to board the G309 from Beijing to southwest China's Chongqing Municipality on Tuesday.

The 40-something computer technician from Chongqing told a Xinhua reporter he knows a few tricks for securing precious train tickets. "The closer to the Spring Festival it is, the easier it is to buy tickets."

After a few minutes, Yang and his fellow travelers began to board. It would be the first time that most of them had made the journey by high-speed rail.

Transportation in mountainous Chongqing and Sichuan Province has always been difficult. In the 1980s, it took over two days to reach Beijing from Chongqing and Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan. The area is one of the biggest sources of migrant labor in China, meaning high pressure during every festival travel rush.

Electricity multiple unit (EMU) trains briefly linked Sichuan and Beijing in 2011. The journey at about 200 km per hour took about 15 hours. But the services were canceled after the notorious railway accident in August 2011 that killed 40 people in east China's Zhejiang Province.

It was only on Jan. 1 that high-speed came to the area, reducing journey times from Chongqing and Chengdu to Beijing to about 12 hours. The trip by normal train takes about 25 hours.

There are no standing-room-only tickets on high-speed trains, so their interiors are much calmer and less congested. Staff collect waste every two hours. Lavatories are disabled-friendly. There is enough space for passengers to stretch out in their seats. For Huang Jianmei, it is all a far cry from Spring Festival homecomings in the past.

Huang settled in Beijing in 2004. This was the first time that she had returned home to Chongqing with her husband for Spring Festival. The 29-year-old recalled that in her second year in China's capital, the only ticket she could get was for one of the extra services added by railway authorities during peak demand. These tended to be served by older rolling stock. Their green paint became a symbol of an outdated and slow railway.

That trip took Huang over 40 hours and is an experience she never wants to repeat.

"There were much too many people in the carriage. Some passengers had to board through windows. It would take an hour to walk from one end of the carriage to the other. And forget about using the lavatory! There were passengers inside!" Huang said, leaning against her husband, who was watching a movie on a tablet computer.

"It was never a decent journey in the past. It was like transporting livestock!" said Yan Wenjian, another passenger on G309. It was also the first time that the 35-year-old was getting to go back home with his wife from north China.

His strongest memory of Spring Festival train travel is a 32-hour ordeal in the year 2000. Passengers crammed into every available space: along the corridors, under seats, in lavatories. He set off walking to the lavatory half an hour in advance of needing to go each time. His limbs became numb because there was no room to stretch, he recalled.

What did Mr. Yang think of his journey? He said he missed the camaraderie-in-adversity that developed among passengers on the old-fashioned trips. "This is not like the travel rush. I'm not used to it."