China's high-speed rail gets World Bank vote
The mainland's high-speed rail has a promising initial traffic, the World Bank said in a paper, praising the world's fastest expanding high-speed rail system again.
The mainland's high-speed rail has a promising initial traffic, the World Bank said in a paper released yesterday, praising the world's fastest expanding high-speed rail system again after another paper in July said construction costs of high-speed rail in the country are a third lower than in other places.
The new paper said the mainland's high-speed rail traffic reached 672 million trips last year, increasing four times from 2008, and that more than 2.9 billion passengers had taken a high-speed train trip in the country between April 2007 and October this year.
"China has the world's largest and still expanding high-speed rail network, but whether ridership would materialise has been the subject of much debate," the World Bank said. "Traffic can be expected to continue rapid growth over the coming two decades."
The bank has supported six railway projects with design speeds ranging from 200km to 350km per hour. Railways with maximum speed of 250km per hour or more are considered high-speed.
"In 2013, China's high-speed rail lines carried more passenger-kilometres (214 billion) than the rest of the world combined, about 2.5 times the volume in Japan and four times the volume in France," the lender said.
The paper is one of a series the World Bank has done over the years to evaluate the economic impacts of high-speed rail projects in China.
It presented case studies of one of the busiest routes and a relatively lightly used intercity route, and conducted a survey together with the China Railway Corp, the national rail operator.
It found 50 to 70 per cent of passengers in the two cases had income of less than 5,000 yuan (HK$6,230) per month, while the high-speed rail passengers' average income was higher than that of non-high-speed train travellers by 35 to 50 per cent.
A large proportion of the passengers was between the age of 25 and 55, with many using high-speed rail for business travel, the paper said.
However, the paper also said: "Caution is of course required with the self-reported income figures, as richer individuals tend to understate their incomes to some extent in all countries."
It said the traffic densities of high-speed rail in China had grown from 2.8 million in its first year to 22.5 million last year, while seat occupancy rate was 70 per cent, according to in January.
"While initial results are encouraging, high-speed rail remains a major investment that requires high traffic density to be justified economically and financially," said Gerald Ollivier, a World Bank transport specialist and co-author of the paper.
"This can be achieved by working closely with cities to develop areas around stations in a way that leverages the gain in accessibility that high-speed rail provides."
China has been eager to export its high-speed rail technology, but bidding for such projects overseas has not been smooth. Mexico abruptly scrapped a US$3.75 billion high-speed rail deal awarded to a Chinese-led consortium last month amid an outcry over the tendering process.
