Life, housing and business are following the high speed rail lines in China
by noreply@blogger.com (brian wang) from NextBigFuture.com on (#28TK0)
In China's three big population centres-the areas around Beijing in the north, Shanghai in the east and Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, in the south-life and work have started to follow the sinews of the high-speed rail system. Trains were previously too infrequent, too slow and too crowded to allow for daily commutes. Now, each of these three mega-cities is developing commuter corridors. Little wonder: house prices in satellite towns and cities tend to be much cheaper. In Kunshan, for example, homes cost about 70% less than in nearby Shanghai. But the bullet train between the two cities takes just 19 minutes and costs a mere 25 yuan ($3.60). And Kunshan is just one of many options for those seeking to escape Shanghai's high costs. There are now about 75 million people living within an hour of Shanghai by high-speed rail.
Surveys show that more than half of passengers on the busiest lines are "generated traffic"-that is, people making trips that they would not have made before. This is unquestionably good for the economy. It means the trains are expanding the pool of labour and consumers around China's most productive cities, while pushing investment and technology to poorer ones. Xu Xiangshang, a dapper businessman, oversees sales of apartments built next to high-speed railway stations in less well-off parts of Anhui. These are less than half an hour from Nanjing, a prosperous city of 8m that is the capital of Jiangsu province. "Bullet trains are becoming just like buses," he says.
The overall bill is already high. China Railway Corporation, the state-owned operator of the train system, has debts of more than 4 trillion yuan, equal to about 6% of GDP.
Less than a decade ago China had yet to connect any of its cities by bullet train. Today, it has 20,000km (12,500 miles) of high-speed rail lines, more than the rest of the world combined. It is planning to lay another 15,000km by 2025. Just as astonishing is urban growth alongside the tracks. At regular intervals-almost wherever there are stations, even if seemingly in the middle of nowhere-thickets of newly built offices and residential blocks rise from the ground.
But the network expansion now under way is even bolder than Mr Liu had envisaged. China has a four-by-four grid at present: four big north-south and east-west lines. Its new plan is to construct an eight-by-eight grid by 2035. The ultimate goal is to have 45,000km of high-speed track. Zhao Jian of Beijing Jiaotong University, who has long criticised the high-speed push, reckons that only 5,000km of this will be in areas with enough people to justify the cost. "With each new line, the losses will get bigger," he says.
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Surveys show that more than half of passengers on the busiest lines are "generated traffic"-that is, people making trips that they would not have made before. This is unquestionably good for the economy. It means the trains are expanding the pool of labour and consumers around China's most productive cities, while pushing investment and technology to poorer ones. Xu Xiangshang, a dapper businessman, oversees sales of apartments built next to high-speed railway stations in less well-off parts of Anhui. These are less than half an hour from Nanjing, a prosperous city of 8m that is the capital of Jiangsu province. "Bullet trains are becoming just like buses," he says.
The overall bill is already high. China Railway Corporation, the state-owned operator of the train system, has debts of more than 4 trillion yuan, equal to about 6% of GDP.
Less than a decade ago China had yet to connect any of its cities by bullet train. Today, it has 20,000km (12,500 miles) of high-speed rail lines, more than the rest of the world combined. It is planning to lay another 15,000km by 2025. Just as astonishing is urban growth alongside the tracks. At regular intervals-almost wherever there are stations, even if seemingly in the middle of nowhere-thickets of newly built offices and residential blocks rise from the ground.
But the network expansion now under way is even bolder than Mr Liu had envisaged. China has a four-by-four grid at present: four big north-south and east-west lines. Its new plan is to construct an eight-by-eight grid by 2035. The ultimate goal is to have 45,000km of high-speed track. Zhao Jian of Beijing Jiaotong University, who has long criticised the high-speed push, reckons that only 5,000km of this will be in areas with enough people to justify the cost. "With each new line, the losses will get bigger," he says.
Read more