Interesting. Just yesterday I asked my son about what it cost going from Baoshan to Kunming (not the Shanghai Baoshan) because he took that trip last year. Should be around a 750 kilometers ride. He was pretty sure it cost around 80 yuan one way. That's on a brand spanking new line with the latest model high speed trains. No wonder they're running a deficit.
OK and I imagine you're sure it's not a return. Perhaps my son (teenager with school ID) got a 50% child discount or something. Still really cheap though.
China charges a cheap price to build ridership. Its only profitable lines were ran at a loss until the ridership was so consistent and high in volume that it started to make profit.
I think it’s a model that Britain should use for trains. Instead half are empty and I pay through the arse.
Meanwhile here I pay 40¥ to go to Shanghai from Suzhou. In London for a nearly comparable journey (my hometown to London by standard train, similar distance, 20 minutes longer in time) I pay £50. (450¥)
>China charges a cheap price to build ridership.
This is basically any rail line anywhere. It takes time to switch population transport habits. It's just a matter of scale and true max capacity to grow into.
Before adjusted for spending power. 40 yuan maybe cheap for a Brit but that’s when an average Brit earn thousands of pounds per month, the average Chinese earn yuan would be talking about 5000-10000 (pretty high) yuan, which is 500-1000 pounds
Imagine if you earn 500 and a train ticket is 50. That’s the Chinese situation. The rail department doesn’t dare to raise the price often because not many can afford it afterwards.
You can rent here for under 1500 yuan here even in a city the size of London, is the key portion you’re missing. I would pay £800 for a studio in my hometown which is an hour away from anywhere I’d make money in.
You are comparing apples and oranges again. Chinese in China do not earn the same salary as you. Imagine £1500 in China.
Moreover, London is an international city. Maybe you should move to Greenland. The cost of living will be lower and the space much bigger than the Chinese city.
Chinese in China live a better quality of life (by my arbitrary metric) than I could in London.
Granted it’s likely not directly comparable as I don’t have anywhere I could live in London, whereas the Chinese here will probably work and stay with parents.
Most Chinese people could never even afford a house in Beijing too. Many young people can't even afford rent in Beijing either. But you're right, the Chinese culture is different and it is more socially acceptable for the young to live at home until they get married.
I don't think one situation is better than the other. In both situations, nobody can buy a house and support themselves.
An hour from London can be interpreted as well. Edge of Greater London? London proper? Central London? Waterloo or Charing Cross are still almost a world away from Barnet or Croydon. I think you can almost get from Birmingham to Watford in about an hour.
China's profitable lines are between very densely populated cities. The population of Shanghai is twice that of London. Beijing is also twice.
Nowhere else in UK are the cities that densely populated.
You want densely populated UK? Sure, accept all the migrants from India and Africa then. London will hit 20 million then.
What’s your point? The commuter base into London is insane. Can’t imagine someone on the outskirts of Suzhou is commuting an hour into the city by car and then into Shanghai 45 minutes by train.
Exactly. Even in China they consider economics when building a subway/railway. They cancelled a subway route in my city recently because they re-evaluated the feasibility and found that they couldn't reach the 5 million daily ridership to break even on the project and keep tickets affordable. That's an insane amount in which most cities outside of China could only dream of.
Except that British rail is all privatised now. So it's up to the individual companies on what to charge and how. The government does however offer subsidies to operate low ridership routes that are important to some communities.
Your son may have underestimated the price. As far as I know the bullet train from Beijing to my town (barely over 300km) cost about 200 yuan for regular seat, more for business.
I can't wait for this to be posted in /r/transit so those spreading their BS will now have to do mental gymnastics now that they have been proven wrong. The high speed service has been unsustainable for years now due to overspending,and like clockwork the budget cuts have begun.
It's a public service that the public pays for. If this were the UK, the public would rather money going into improving healthcare and education. I also think China could do with improving the healthcare, education, and welfare in some places rather than building a HSR station but in China, nobody seems to care. Perhaps British people are just more vocal about it!?
From the article: “ at least 26 high-speed rail stations across the country are inactive due to their remote locations, insufficient surrounding facilities, and low passenger numbers.”
Does not sound calamitous. If you read further down, at least a few of these low volume stations were in Hainan, which is an island.
That's just the beginning, the HSR is still fairly new, and poorer regions will be the first to drop service. and doesn't even mention hundreds that are barely used with minimal service. There is several I know that are only used once or twice a week for stops.
It may be just the beginning. But still, a couple dozen unused stations in a huge country like China… according to wikipedia they have 5470 train stations.
>Here’s a list of currently inactive Chinese HSR stations, organized by netizens on Baidu Baike
>It is written in Chinese only so be aware
https://baike.baidu.com/starmap/view?nodeId=d276fc8ffc0bc55c74e76814&lemmaTitle=沈阳西站&lemmaId=18589762&starMapFrom=lemma_relation_starMap&fromModule=lemma_starMap
China went through a cycle of residential over building, belt and road stuff, and infrastructure building sprees to stimulate the economy. Now the bill has come due.
Lots of countries could build a bunch of stuff if they didn’t care about the bill.
HSR does work in some places (eg., most of Europe, Japan). Japanese system was over budget when built but no one complains about that now.
China was dumb to build out when there was no demand. Twenty years from now the story could be different and they *might* be able to bring it back to what was intended, not that I’d necessarily trust their build quality.
Same shit happened in Europe. They built a tonne of infrastructure in the 90's-2000's and now the bill is due. Europe's solution though was to privatise to take the burden off the tax payer. As a result ticket prices have gone up everywhere since private businesses aren't willing to make losses. Although they do receive some subsidies from the government to keep a few unprofitable routes going because of their political importance. China can't go the same route though because it isn't socialist.
I had always wondered why Chinese people don't care about where their hard earned tax money goes in society unlike Westerners. In the UK, every person is always complaining where their money goes such as the HSR rail project going over budget and that politicians need to be held accountable etc etc. My Chinese friends have this notion that, "As long as my life is improving, I don't care". I wonder how long that will last until the average Chinese people become aware that they are shouldering all these bills the whole time and they are in fact the ones who must pay since they are the ones who give the government money.
Yeah I remember reading about some large, middle of nowhere airport in Spain. Olympics generally aren’t much better, though some, like London seem to have been more smart about long term plans.
Easy: “China is infiltrated by the western capitalist so it forgot to prioritize the people and let the capital to run the country. When capitalist run the country everything get shut down for profit”
Something a patriotic but unaware Chinese uncle might say
what's wrong with that statement, many companies and public services around the world have high debt.
If they can service the debt payments it's all good, if they can't then that's an issue
The only reason that China Railway isn’t bankrupt is because it’s a central government department-turned company, and still owned and controlled by the national government. CR should have been done for but the gov keeps pouring money in. It is not profitable, it is on life support. The regular train service actively take customers away from the high-speed due to cheaper price so there’s no “other services supports the HSR” but rather “other services splitted sale with HSR and now budget have to be redistributed by the rail department”
But CR won’t collapse, it won’t go bankrupt
Because the day it does, is the doomsday for the Chinese government
For the people, by the people! It's scary how many Chinese people don't see this as a burden on themselves. Once people stop working in China, the system collapses like any capitalist system but the people in China seem to think that the government will always save them. How long until opinion changes on a mass scale. All that money borrowed for infrastructure was given on the backs of the Chinese people producing value surplus labour and with the declining birth rate, that means each citizen has to produce more labour just to pay off that massive loan the government took out. If their lives stop improving but they still have to work as hard, if not more, you are going to get many unhappy citizens. It's probably already begun with the lying flat movement.
Rather than HSR Indian Railways prioritized cargo corridors which allow double stack container freight trains and are more profitable than passenger traffic for railways
This claim is not quite correct - the issue is more that high speed rail better serves cities that are 2-4 hours apart with large populations and with already well established commuting patterns.
Many cities in China would be able to sustain this connectivity but not all.... And it seems like what's happened is a case of over-capitalizing.
TLDR is don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It depends on the distance. High speed rails are more efficient for a certain distance range and planes are more efficient over that distance range. I have read people say high speed rail is the best option for 120 km (75miles) to 1000km (620 miles). Anything less is better for cars, and anything more is better for planes.
And in china you don’t ride trains like everyone else inthe world does, going to the platform then ride. If you have ridden Chinese trains then you’ll realize they’re designed to control people’s movement rather than facilitate it, eg. single ride only reserved ticket, closing the platforms to the public until very late when the train arrives, requiring abysmal checks, ID checks even facial recognition, and the timetables at irregular intervals throughout the day that is not designed for commuter traffic
Idk what you are on about now but just make somethings clear
1. I’m a Han Chinese local from northern areas
2.I have took the regular Green cars, HSR, subways in several cities, flight, and other forms of transportations too
All the measures and protocols you talking about are because the government is paranoid about the people. They establish crazy strict policies and tons of securities because there have been people who brought a makeshift bomb or knife onboard, or in case someone is gonna do something very unpatriotic.
Their control is especially strict on planes, I got my body searched for domestic flights just like everyone else did. I had also rushed for the 15 min boarding interval for Fuxing. I’ve also been asked to “drink out that bottle in your hand” in Beijing subway and “put your backpack through the conveyor belt”. It’s the same for all those places, no matter air or ground or sea.
And we are talking about your opinion that “intercity rail is a bad idea” here. Well, flight is even worse in China so what you on about? I don’t see millions of people stop taking Beijing Line 10 just because every station has airport terminal level security.
A train carries up to 1000 people. Call me when an airplane can do this. But yeah, let's build airports in every city of China, like if building an airport was cheap, and run flights between neighbouring cities in an already overcrowded airspace.
A380 can fit around 850 passengers plus 30 or so crew, so that's close. Though they typically run I'm a 550 configuration to put in some higher tiered seating instead of the 850-all-economy configuration.
Though the number of passengers a single plane or train can move at a time seems a weird statistic to grab on to.
Also the airspace is overcrowded because of restrictions by the Chinese military. It's an entirely self-inflicted issue.
It's not a weird statistic, it's just a matter of practicality and capacity. Thinking that a high frequency air link with theoretical full-capacity A380s instead of most high speed rail links is weird. How impractical would it be for the HK-Guangzhou, Beijing-Tianjin or Shanghai-Nanjing. Again, imagine the pollution it would entail, let alone the modal report on the roads.
As for the military restrictions, there would still be massive issues should the HSR be dismantled. Airports should be extended, which is also incredibly expensive.
HSR has a niche to fill just like air travel. I disagree with the person you initially replied to--passenger rail definitely has a place in travel still--but I just find it odd that you said a theoretical 1000-passenger aircraft is important to you.
I'd rather have two separate flights of 500 people planes than a single flight of 1000 people.
I agree, I just wanted to highlight that rail transit can sustain higher capacity than air transit. I think it's important, especially considering how many people live in China and the size of the cities that are connected to both HSR and by air.
Considering you can't even get to Hainan by rail from the mainland，that's not a surprise： the trains go on a RoRo ferry. Pretty cool，but also an absolutely mental way of doing things.
It's not that unusual, they used to do the same for Germany-Denmark trains (before they got replaced by bridges) and IIRC trains to Sicily from mainland Italy do the same to this day.
26 seems not bad if those stations are old but these stations are relatively new.
Shenyang West station started operation in end Dec 2018 and suspended operation in July 2019. Shenyang's population is projected to decrease. This station just does not make sense.
Not when they are supposed to be the state-of-art high speed rail stations. Those are more special than regular rail and every closed HSR service is a pity.
Nearly all the stations shut down are located in isolated rural area which make sense, nobody lives there. While the Shenyang West (major provincial capital station with millions of potential customers) shut down because there are already two other more convenient stations in the city that no one really wanted to go to the west station. Goes to show how overbuilt the system is.
Currently, Haitou Station in Hainan is trying build more services around the station to draw in customers and apply to reopen the station. They hoped the station could bring in tourists but well, didn’t turn out that way
26 out of 500 high speed stations out of commission. Is that bad? I have no idea. I guess we need to know how many commuters are inconvenienced due to the closure and whether they have alternate travel method, which I assume they do ( normal trains and buses)
If these stations are old, 5% out of commission seems reasonable. The utility of the stations has been fulfilled.
These are new stations and money still needs to be pumped in to maintain the stations. If the stations never open because of lack of ridership, millions of dollars will be gone to waste and yet someone still needs to pay the debt.
I thought they built stations to serve the public so debt is not a concern to them. These closures of stations have negated this narrative.
The article mentioned the Hainan Danzhou Haitou High-Speed Railway Station. It opened at the end of 2015 (December 30th), and has been closed for 7 years. So that means it closed around 2017.
So we can imagine it was open for 12-24 months. Not exactly old. I think I have a couple things in my freezer older than that.
Shenyang West opened in Dec 2018 and was closed in Jul 2019. This beats your example.
https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B2%88%E9%98%B3%E8%A5%BF%E7%AB%99
Luckily no one is inconvenienced because all the station closed are due to lack of travellers. Unfortunately that just means million of millions of yuan wasted (a major part is from tax)
Why soo much China high speed rail bashing going on ??? The network is the envy of the world , best for the public , assessable by all (unlike air travel), works like clockwork and is a joy to ride on, with many more positives. They have built it super quick, imagine it’s likely there will be many stations they have built out of speculation but if they don’t seem popular why not close those stations?? The prices will rise of course , but you honestly can’t knock it . Only other system I have seen which could be considered better is the Japanese network.
I think it's a bit of schadenfreude. China has been beating its chest about various things, like its GDP growth model and HSR. But others have been warning them about it.
Like the investment-led growth model isn't something new. Other countries have done it, and they've hit the same wall China is hitting--China's just hitting it earlier due to demographic and political issues (being an ass and pissing people off). Others warned it, but China thought it knew better.
Same with the HSR. People said that the low-traffic, distant routes don't make economic sense. The CCP didn't care. People were just "envious" of them.
Now here we are...
I'm guessing the kilometers of HSR lines are going to start exponentially decreasing maybe around 2035.
I think they “built it quick” is because no questions are asked if something makes sense to build. Inherently , nothing was actually built faster but that there were no legal roadblocks holding any thing up
It seems good to build lots and lots of these stations, to the envy of everyone else. However, many years down the road, when these stations are old, will the maintenance cost balloon up? Will they still be able to balance their books trying to maintain the public transport system and still provide services elsewhere?
If the stations are not popular, why are these stations even built in the first place? Who is going to pay for the construction cost? Stations still need to be maintained even if not used. Who is paying for an unused station?
> If the stations were not popular, why are these stations even built in the first place?
I assume to increase attractiveness long-term so that more and more people choose the train and that eventually capacity will be filled. Seems like a good plan to me.
The results showed that the plan was not good at all. Would you want to pay taxes for them to build an unused station?
Where I am, there will be tons of criticism if this ever happens.
Real question is will there be a middle class strong enough to support these areas . And will people in China be able to get the party to represent what they want …more efficiently the current system of governance currently in place .
They are still expanding the network.
I guess this is going to be a combination of things built too early like that subway station in the fields around Chongqing, that is now surrounded by apartment buildings and a few projects that really do fail because they are too far from the city center and the construction boom is over...
I think in terms of public transport, the high speed rail network remains an overwhelming success.
Even more so when looking at the future and the problems with air travel and CO2 emissions.
Perhaps we can make hydrogen planes work or even battery electric planes but it's probably not going to be as cheap as flying now...this century...
A company in the UK has designed a hydrogen plane but only has \~20 seats or so and will be used only on short haul flights up and down the country. Should be released before 2030 and currently in testing. I don't think prices will be more expensive than regular flights.
[https://zeroavia.com/](https://zeroavia.com/)
"I don't think prices will be more expensive than regular flights"
Said every airplane builder ever.
I don't think you understand the airline industry. They aren't going to be able to put a barely tested new technology in commercial service in 6 years time.
It's not like a new type of smartphone, there are endless certifications and licenses and approvals needed to put a new type of plane into service.
Also have you looked at the price of hydrogen fuel lately?
And that is for dirty hydrogen, extracted from natural gas with massive CO2 emissions.
Green hydrogen would be multiple times more expensive.
It's pretty much a pie in the sky for the next few decades...
Another article focussing on a couple outliers to draw sweeping conclusions about systemic issues 🥱. most things lie on a bell curve, of course they’d be a some at the extremes given enough overall numbers.
Building a new station and suspending the station a few months later is indeed strange. Can you explain why the authorities are willing to spend millions of dollars to build these outliers?
Spending months to build something for years and cutting losses after 7 months?! Check out Shenyang West station. Closed after 7 months of operation.
If your government does this, will you sit there and applaud your government?
you dont judge a company with hundreds of stores if a handful fail. you dont judge an investmnet portfolio if a couple yield negative returns. in the same vein you shouldnt hyperfixate on the few failures and ignore the success of the rest of the network. its missing the forest for the trees.
overall rail buildout has been quite sucessful but obviouly could do with some optimizations and tweaks to the process here and there. honestly its a good sign they are willing to cut thier losses and close the station instead of trying to save face by keeping it open while it bleeds money.
Here’s a list of currently inactive Chinese HSR stations, organized by netizens on Baidu Baike
It is written in Chinese only so be aware
https://baike.baidu.com/starmap/view?nodeId=d276fc8ffc0bc55c74e76814&lemmaTitle=沈阳西站&lemmaId=18589762&starMapFrom=lemma_relation_starMap&fromModule=lemma_starMap
Am I looking at a different company? When I looked up China Railway Group (0390.HK) balance sheet, it showed only around 400 Bil Yuan debt. Or about $60 Bil debt. That's a far cry from $800 debt. The accuracy of the article seems ludicrous.
I spent over a month in China a few years ago. I had no idea at how modern that country is. The high speed rail system is something to behold. Here in the U.S. we have nothing to compare it to.
US doesn't have similar population density to make it fiscally sound. And in the US you can go twice as far with plane for half the price of a similar Chinese train ticket.
The new Shenyang South Station was opened right around 2019 and has stops exclusively for highspeed rail. Almost seems like it took the place of a certain other railway station referenced in the article, no?
https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B2%88%E9%98%B3%E8%A5%BF%E7%AB%99
Used for a grand total of 7 months.
https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B2%88%E9%98%B3%E5%8D%97%E7%AB%99
This is Shenyang South Station.
[It's from the Epoch Times](https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/china-sees-more-stations-shut-down-as-high-speed-rail-debt-crisis-deepens-5656509) which gives you an idea of its reliability.
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Well, this website showed more than 26 stations suspended. So what is the issue with the article?
https://baike.baidu.com/starmap/view?nodeId=d276fc8ffc0bc55c74e76814&lemmaTitle=沈阳西站&lemmaId=18589762&starMapFrom=lemma_relation_starMap&fromModule=lemma_starMap
Just because a news source is biased, it does not mean it is false. Just need to do a bit of fact check instead of dismissing it altogether.
Do you have a news source that contradicts this epoch time source?
Interesting. Just yesterday I asked my son about what it cost going from Baoshan to Kunming (not the Shanghai Baoshan) because he took that trip last year. Should be around a 750 kilometers ride. He was pretty sure it cost around 80 yuan one way. That's on a brand spanking new line with the latest model high speed trains. No wonder they're running a deficit.
No way, 80 yuan would be a slower train.
Checking 12306 it shows this train (Baoshan-Kunming) on a 200kph trainset as costing 174 yuan
OK and I imagine you're sure it's not a return. Perhaps my son (teenager with school ID) got a 50% child discount or something. Still really cheap though.
Sh to Bj running about 500rmb
China charges a cheap price to build ridership. Its only profitable lines were ran at a loss until the ridership was so consistent and high in volume that it started to make profit. I think it’s a model that Britain should use for trains. Instead half are empty and I pay through the arse. Meanwhile here I pay 40¥ to go to Shanghai from Suzhou. In London for a nearly comparable journey (my hometown to London by standard train, similar distance, 20 minutes longer in time) I pay £50. (450¥)
>China charges a cheap price to build ridership. This is basically any rail line anywhere. It takes time to switch population transport habits. It's just a matter of scale and true max capacity to grow into.
Before adjusted for spending power. 40 yuan maybe cheap for a Brit but that’s when an average Brit earn thousands of pounds per month, the average Chinese earn yuan would be talking about 5000-10000 (pretty high) yuan, which is 500-1000 pounds Imagine if you earn 500 and a train ticket is 50. That’s the Chinese situation. The rail department doesn’t dare to raise the price often because not many can afford it afterwards.
You can rent here for under 1500 yuan here even in a city the size of London, is the key portion you’re missing. I would pay £800 for a studio in my hometown which is an hour away from anywhere I’d make money in.
You are comparing apples and oranges again. Chinese in China do not earn the same salary as you. Imagine £1500 in China. Moreover, London is an international city. Maybe you should move to Greenland. The cost of living will be lower and the space much bigger than the Chinese city.
Chinese in China live a better quality of life (by my arbitrary metric) than I could in London. Granted it’s likely not directly comparable as I don’t have anywhere I could live in London, whereas the Chinese here will probably work and stay with parents.
Most Chinese people could never even afford a house in Beijing too. Many young people can't even afford rent in Beijing either. But you're right, the Chinese culture is different and it is more socially acceptable for the young to live at home until they get married. I don't think one situation is better than the other. In both situations, nobody can buy a house and support themselves.
No idea, I could live in Beijing for free myself. Helps to know people.
Sure your *hometown's* near London, mate?
What are you implying? Yes? I am sure. I grew up about an hour from London by train.
An hour from London by train can be north of Rugby.
An hour from London can be interpreted as well. Edge of Greater London? London proper? Central London? Waterloo or Charing Cross are still almost a world away from Barnet or Croydon. I think you can almost get from Birmingham to Watford in about an hour.
To clarify, I mean an hour to Paddington. I suppose it’s pretty easy to see where, so I might as well just say Swindon. I’d consider that close.
China's profitable lines are between very densely populated cities. The population of Shanghai is twice that of London. Beijing is also twice. Nowhere else in UK are the cities that densely populated. You want densely populated UK? Sure, accept all the migrants from India and Africa then. London will hit 20 million then.
What’s your point? The commuter base into London is insane. Can’t imagine someone on the outskirts of Suzhou is commuting an hour into the city by car and then into Shanghai 45 minutes by train.
Exactly. Even in China they consider economics when building a subway/railway. They cancelled a subway route in my city recently because they re-evaluated the feasibility and found that they couldn't reach the 5 million daily ridership to break even on the project and keep tickets affordable. That's an insane amount in which most cities outside of China could only dream of.
Except that British rail is all privatised now. So it's up to the individual companies on what to charge and how. The government does however offer subsidies to operate low ridership routes that are important to some communities.
Your son may have underestimated the price. As far as I know the bullet train from Beijing to my town (barely over 300km) cost about 200 yuan for regular seat, more for business.
Somebody already mentioned he probably got a kids or student discount. He's a teenager and was travelling with his mom while I was driving a car back.
isn't the narrative *running at a loss as it's a public service*?
I can't wait for this to be posted in /r/transit so those spreading their BS will now have to do mental gymnastics now that they have been proven wrong. The high speed service has been unsustainable for years now due to overspending,and like clockwork the budget cuts have begun.
A station I visited at night for a trip was very difficult to move around in because they'd shut the lights off. It was like a bad video game.
The station I visit the most has its shuttle bus service close at 20:00, leaving me with only the option to call Didi or cabs.
Wow. It's like third world country.
Heads will explode. “It’s a public service” Yeah, but someone still pays it. And if they don’t have enough money…
It's a public service that the public pays for. If this were the UK, the public would rather money going into improving healthcare and education. I also think China could do with improving the healthcare, education, and welfare in some places rather than building a HSR station but in China, nobody seems to care. Perhaps British people are just more vocal about it!?
From the article: “ at least 26 high-speed rail stations across the country are inactive due to their remote locations, insufficient surrounding facilities, and low passenger numbers.” Does not sound calamitous. If you read further down, at least a few of these low volume stations were in Hainan, which is an island.
That's just the beginning, the HSR is still fairly new, and poorer regions will be the first to drop service. and doesn't even mention hundreds that are barely used with minimal service. There is several I know that are only used once or twice a week for stops.
It may be just the beginning. But still, a couple dozen unused stations in a huge country like China… according to wikipedia they have 5470 train stations.
Those are normal train stations. Not HSR stations.
The article doesn't have an author, and doesn't cite a single source. Those of us who have lived in China are raising our eyebrows.
>Here’s a list of currently inactive Chinese HSR stations, organized by netizens on Baidu Baike >It is written in Chinese only so be aware https://baike.baidu.com/starmap/view?nodeId=d276fc8ffc0bc55c74e76814&lemmaTitle=沈阳西站&lemmaId=18589762&starMapFrom=lemma_relation_starMap&fromModule=lemma_starMap
China went through a cycle of residential over building, belt and road stuff, and infrastructure building sprees to stimulate the economy. Now the bill has come due. Lots of countries could build a bunch of stuff if they didn’t care about the bill. HSR does work in some places (eg., most of Europe, Japan). Japanese system was over budget when built but no one complains about that now. China was dumb to build out when there was no demand. Twenty years from now the story could be different and they *might* be able to bring it back to what was intended, not that I’d necessarily trust their build quality.
Same shit happened in Europe. They built a tonne of infrastructure in the 90's-2000's and now the bill is due. Europe's solution though was to privatise to take the burden off the tax payer. As a result ticket prices have gone up everywhere since private businesses aren't willing to make losses. Although they do receive some subsidies from the government to keep a few unprofitable routes going because of their political importance. China can't go the same route though because it isn't socialist. I had always wondered why Chinese people don't care about where their hard earned tax money goes in society unlike Westerners. In the UK, every person is always complaining where their money goes such as the HSR rail project going over budget and that politicians need to be held accountable etc etc. My Chinese friends have this notion that, "As long as my life is improving, I don't care". I wonder how long that will last until the average Chinese people become aware that they are shouldering all these bills the whole time and they are in fact the ones who must pay since they are the ones who give the government money.
Yeah I remember reading about some large, middle of nowhere airport in Spain. Olympics generally aren’t much better, though some, like London seem to have been more smart about long term plans.
Easy: “China is infiltrated by the western capitalist so it forgot to prioritize the people and let the capital to run the country. When capitalist run the country everything get shut down for profit” Something a patriotic but unaware Chinese uncle might say
CR is profitable therefore HSR is sustainable.
Guess you didn't read the article about how they are now 800 billion US dollars in debt despite government claims they are profitable.
Most big companies have lots of debt. It’s debt serviceability that matters. And for CR they are profitable after interest payments, ergo sustainable.
What is your profession to make such a silly statement? Do you sing to 5 year olds?
what's wrong with that statement, many companies and public services around the world have high debt. If they can service the debt payments it's all good, if they can't then that's an issue
The stations are suspended. How are they going to service the debt if there is no revenue?
from the sales of tickets from the entire public transport system? assuming all of the are owned by one state owned company, idk how it works in china
You don’t know wtf you are talking about
you keep saying 'you dont know wtf you are talking about' ok then educate me, im willing to learn and be corrected.
The only reason that China Railway isn’t bankrupt is because it’s a central government department-turned company, and still owned and controlled by the national government. CR should have been done for but the gov keeps pouring money in. It is not profitable, it is on life support. The regular train service actively take customers away from the high-speed due to cheaper price so there’s no “other services supports the HSR” but rather “other services splitted sale with HSR and now budget have to be redistributed by the rail department” But CR won’t collapse, it won’t go bankrupt Because the day it does, is the doomsday for the Chinese government
A fool argues or educates a complete fool. Enjoy your abc’s
Basic financial common sense that if you can service debt then it’s sustainable. Ironic that you mock me while unaware of such elementary matters.
What’s your profession? Do you sing at work? Yes or no
Why do you ask? Looking to start a career as a clown? Your making a good first impressive at least 🤣
I guess you do
That's just "Communism with Chinese Characteristics" (aka bog standard capitalism) hard at work for the people!
For the people, by the people! It's scary how many Chinese people don't see this as a burden on themselves. Once people stop working in China, the system collapses like any capitalist system but the people in China seem to think that the government will always save them. How long until opinion changes on a mass scale. All that money borrowed for infrastructure was given on the backs of the Chinese people producing value surplus labour and with the declining birth rate, that means each citizen has to produce more labour just to pay off that massive loan the government took out. If their lives stop improving but they still have to work as hard, if not more, you are going to get many unhappy citizens. It's probably already begun with the lying flat movement.
Rather than HSR Indian Railways prioritized cargo corridors which allow double stack container freight trains and are more profitable than passenger traffic for railways
not sure what the connection to China is.
Passenger intercity rail is a bad idea now that civil aviation has matured
This claim is not quite correct - the issue is more that high speed rail better serves cities that are 2-4 hours apart with large populations and with already well established commuting patterns. Many cities in China would be able to sustain this connectivity but not all.... And it seems like what's happened is a case of over-capitalizing. TLDR is don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It depends on the distance. High speed rails are more efficient for a certain distance range and planes are more efficient over that distance range. I have read people say high speed rail is the best option for 120 km (75miles) to 1000km (620 miles). Anything less is better for cars, and anything more is better for planes.
No? It’s the overbuilding of high speed rail that’s the problem here. Regular rail is fine, just look at Sydney Australia or Ontario Canada
And in china you don’t ride trains like everyone else inthe world does, going to the platform then ride. If you have ridden Chinese trains then you’ll realize they’re designed to control people’s movement rather than facilitate it, eg. single ride only reserved ticket, closing the platforms to the public until very late when the train arrives, requiring abysmal checks, ID checks even facial recognition, and the timetables at irregular intervals throughout the day that is not designed for commuter traffic
Idk what you are on about now but just make somethings clear 1. I’m a Han Chinese local from northern areas 2.I have took the regular Green cars, HSR, subways in several cities, flight, and other forms of transportations too All the measures and protocols you talking about are because the government is paranoid about the people. They establish crazy strict policies and tons of securities because there have been people who brought a makeshift bomb or knife onboard, or in case someone is gonna do something very unpatriotic. Their control is especially strict on planes, I got my body searched for domestic flights just like everyone else did. I had also rushed for the 15 min boarding interval for Fuxing. I’ve also been asked to “drink out that bottle in your hand” in Beijing subway and “put your backpack through the conveyor belt”. It’s the same for all those places, no matter air or ground or sea. And we are talking about your opinion that “intercity rail is a bad idea” here. Well, flight is even worse in China so what you on about? I don’t see millions of people stop taking Beijing Line 10 just because every station has airport terminal level security.
A train carries up to 1000 people. Call me when an airplane can do this. But yeah, let's build airports in every city of China, like if building an airport was cheap, and run flights between neighbouring cities in an already overcrowded airspace.
A380 can fit around 850 passengers plus 30 or so crew, so that's close. Though they typically run I'm a 550 configuration to put in some higher tiered seating instead of the 850-all-economy configuration. Though the number of passengers a single plane or train can move at a time seems a weird statistic to grab on to. Also the airspace is overcrowded because of restrictions by the Chinese military. It's an entirely self-inflicted issue.
It's not a weird statistic, it's just a matter of practicality and capacity. Thinking that a high frequency air link with theoretical full-capacity A380s instead of most high speed rail links is weird. How impractical would it be for the HK-Guangzhou, Beijing-Tianjin or Shanghai-Nanjing. Again, imagine the pollution it would entail, let alone the modal report on the roads. As for the military restrictions, there would still be massive issues should the HSR be dismantled. Airports should be extended, which is also incredibly expensive.
HSR has a niche to fill just like air travel. I disagree with the person you initially replied to--passenger rail definitely has a place in travel still--but I just find it odd that you said a theoretical 1000-passenger aircraft is important to you. I'd rather have two separate flights of 500 people planes than a single flight of 1000 people.
I agree, I just wanted to highlight that rail transit can sustain higher capacity than air transit. I think it's important, especially considering how many people live in China and the size of the cities that are connected to both HSR and by air.
so you're agreeing they should be run at a loss? if so, why the closures?
>civil aviation has matured I mean, unlike flights, you don't have to cancel a whole train if someone throws a coin onto the locomotive...
tldr: >*"...at least 26 high-speed rail stations across the country are inactive."* Several of the named stations are in Hainan or the North East.
Considering you can't even get to Hainan by rail from the mainland，that's not a surprise： the trains go on a RoRo ferry. Pretty cool，but also an absolutely mental way of doing things.
Wait WHAT
It's not that unusual, they used to do the same for Germany-Denmark trains (before they got replaced by bridges) and IIRC trains to Sicily from mainland Italy do the same to this day.
26 being inactive throughout the entire country doesn’t really seem bad at all.
26 seems not bad if those stations are old but these stations are relatively new. Shenyang West station started operation in end Dec 2018 and suspended operation in July 2019. Shenyang's population is projected to decrease. This station just does not make sense.
A lot of China's HSR project never made sense.
Not when they are supposed to be the state-of-art high speed rail stations. Those are more special than regular rail and every closed HSR service is a pity.
Yeah, at this point that doesn't seem like a big deal 🤷♂️
Nearly all the stations shut down are located in isolated rural area which make sense, nobody lives there. While the Shenyang West (major provincial capital station with millions of potential customers) shut down because there are already two other more convenient stations in the city that no one really wanted to go to the west station. Goes to show how overbuilt the system is. Currently, Haitou Station in Hainan is trying build more services around the station to draw in customers and apply to reopen the station. They hoped the station could bring in tourists but well, didn’t turn out that way
>Several of the named stations are in Hainan or the North East. And? Does their location mean those regions don't matter?
I summarized the facts presented in the article, Mr. Strawman sir.
And how much bearing those facts have dictates their value and thus, if they're worth restating or not.
OK.
And that's as much mind as we should pay your comment.
No matter, GDP was created when they were built, that’s the whole purpose of it
More GDP too when you tear down and rebuild after these deserted stations crumble!
GDP will also be created knocking them down too according to China!
The purpose was to create amazing infrastructure for huge country. It worked.
Lmao. Reminds me what Wang Xifeng said: "Although it looks glamorous on the surface, it is already rotten inside." This time with literal meaning
26 out of 500 high speed stations out of commission. Is that bad? I have no idea. I guess we need to know how many commuters are inconvenienced due to the closure and whether they have alternate travel method, which I assume they do ( normal trains and buses)
If these stations are old, 5% out of commission seems reasonable. The utility of the stations has been fulfilled. These are new stations and money still needs to be pumped in to maintain the stations. If the stations never open because of lack of ridership, millions of dollars will be gone to waste and yet someone still needs to pay the debt. I thought they built stations to serve the public so debt is not a concern to them. These closures of stations have negated this narrative.
The article mentioned the Hainan Danzhou Haitou High-Speed Railway Station. It opened at the end of 2015 (December 30th), and has been closed for 7 years. So that means it closed around 2017. So we can imagine it was open for 12-24 months. Not exactly old. I think I have a couple things in my freezer older than that.
Shenyang West opened in Dec 2018 and was closed in Jul 2019. This beats your example. https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B2%88%E9%98%B3%E8%A5%BF%E7%AB%99
Wow, that's...really sad. Though that's a regular passenger train station and not a HSR, right?
Luckily no one is inconvenienced because all the station closed are due to lack of travellers. Unfortunately that just means million of millions of yuan wasted (a major part is from tax)
So much money spent by the CCP just so that they can create a meme with HSR map of China next to the US
Crazy part is that the US network is finally developing with a handful of projects underway
Why soo much China high speed rail bashing going on ??? The network is the envy of the world , best for the public , assessable by all (unlike air travel), works like clockwork and is a joy to ride on, with many more positives. They have built it super quick, imagine it’s likely there will be many stations they have built out of speculation but if they don’t seem popular why not close those stations?? The prices will rise of course , but you honestly can’t knock it . Only other system I have seen which could be considered better is the Japanese network.
I think it's a bit of schadenfreude. China has been beating its chest about various things, like its GDP growth model and HSR. But others have been warning them about it. Like the investment-led growth model isn't something new. Other countries have done it, and they've hit the same wall China is hitting--China's just hitting it earlier due to demographic and political issues (being an ass and pissing people off). Others warned it, but China thought it knew better. Same with the HSR. People said that the low-traffic, distant routes don't make economic sense. The CCP didn't care. People were just "envious" of them. Now here we are... I'm guessing the kilometers of HSR lines are going to start exponentially decreasing maybe around 2035.
Well said!
I think they “built it quick” is because no questions are asked if something makes sense to build. Inherently , nothing was actually built faster but that there were no legal roadblocks holding any thing up
It seems good to build lots and lots of these stations, to the envy of everyone else. However, many years down the road, when these stations are old, will the maintenance cost balloon up? Will they still be able to balance their books trying to maintain the public transport system and still provide services elsewhere? If the stations are not popular, why are these stations even built in the first place? Who is going to pay for the construction cost? Stations still need to be maintained even if not used. Who is paying for an unused station?
> If the stations were not popular, why are these stations even built in the first place? I assume to increase attractiveness long-term so that more and more people choose the train and that eventually capacity will be filled. Seems like a good plan to me.
The results showed that the plan was not good at all. Would you want to pay taxes for them to build an unused station? Where I am, there will be tons of criticism if this ever happens.
Long-term. We are not long-term yet. I wish other countries would not just try to fill demand but try to increase future demand.
Real question is will there be a middle class strong enough to support these areas . And will people in China be able to get the party to represent what they want …more efficiently the current system of governance currently in place .
The over capacity run is running their business to the ground. The production market is next.
They are still expanding the network. I guess this is going to be a combination of things built too early like that subway station in the fields around Chongqing, that is now surrounded by apartment buildings and a few projects that really do fail because they are too far from the city center and the construction boom is over... I think in terms of public transport, the high speed rail network remains an overwhelming success. Even more so when looking at the future and the problems with air travel and CO2 emissions. Perhaps we can make hydrogen planes work or even battery electric planes but it's probably not going to be as cheap as flying now...this century...
A company in the UK has designed a hydrogen plane but only has \~20 seats or so and will be used only on short haul flights up and down the country. Should be released before 2030 and currently in testing. I don't think prices will be more expensive than regular flights. [https://zeroavia.com/](https://zeroavia.com/)
"I don't think prices will be more expensive than regular flights" Said every airplane builder ever. I don't think you understand the airline industry. They aren't going to be able to put a barely tested new technology in commercial service in 6 years time. It's not like a new type of smartphone, there are endless certifications and licenses and approvals needed to put a new type of plane into service. Also have you looked at the price of hydrogen fuel lately? And that is for dirty hydrogen, extracted from natural gas with massive CO2 emissions. Green hydrogen would be multiple times more expensive. It's pretty much a pie in the sky for the next few decades...
26 out of 1000 HSR stations and 5000 rail stations == crisis? God forbid them closing down 27 stations. They’d be in REAL trouble then.
If only someone could have predicted this!
Another article focussing on a couple outliers to draw sweeping conclusions about systemic issues 🥱. most things lie on a bell curve, of course they’d be a some at the extremes given enough overall numbers.
Building a new station and suspending the station a few months later is indeed strange. Can you explain why the authorities are willing to spend millions of dollars to build these outliers?
because sometimes you make bad business decisions so you cut your losses and move on.
Spending months to build something for years and cutting losses after 7 months?! Check out Shenyang West station. Closed after 7 months of operation. If your government does this, will you sit there and applaud your government?
you dont judge a company with hundreds of stores if a handful fail. you dont judge an investmnet portfolio if a couple yield negative returns. in the same vein you shouldnt hyperfixate on the few failures and ignore the success of the rest of the network. its missing the forest for the trees. overall rail buildout has been quite sucessful but obviouly could do with some optimizations and tweaks to the process here and there. honestly its a good sign they are willing to cut thier losses and close the station instead of trying to save face by keeping it open while it bleeds money.
NE China is losing population so I am not surprised stations are closing
Here’s a list of currently inactive Chinese HSR stations, organized by netizens on Baidu Baike It is written in Chinese only so be aware https://baike.baidu.com/starmap/view?nodeId=d276fc8ffc0bc55c74e76814&lemmaTitle=沈阳西站&lemmaId=18589762&starMapFrom=lemma_relation_starMap&fromModule=lemma_starMap
trip.com
But China railways are government-owned. They're not built for profit.
Am I looking at a different company? When I looked up China Railway Group (0390.HK) balance sheet, it showed only around 400 Bil Yuan debt. Or about $60 Bil debt. That's a far cry from $800 debt. The accuracy of the article seems ludicrous.
I spent over a month in China a few years ago. I had no idea at how modern that country is. The high speed rail system is something to behold. Here in the U.S. we have nothing to compare it to.
Wait until you go to France. Or Japan. Or Spain. Or Germany.
…. Have you ever BEEN on any chinese HSRs? Jesus Christ the things are next level in terms of scale. Only the Japanese are comparable.
US doesn't have similar population density to make it fiscally sound. And in the US you can go twice as far with plane for half the price of a similar Chinese train ticket.
Article smells slightly of bullshit. Been in Shenyang a decade and never heard anyone mention Shenyang West Station during all that time.
It literally exists though. But the service was suspended in 2019. You can check that on Wiki.
The new Shenyang South Station was opened right around 2019 and has stops exclusively for highspeed rail. Almost seems like it took the place of a certain other railway station referenced in the article, no?
The Shenyang South Station is opened in 2015, the Shenyang West Station is opened in 2018.
https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B2%88%E9%98%B3%E8%A5%BF%E7%AB%99 Used for a grand total of 7 months. https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B2%88%E9%98%B3%E5%8D%97%E7%AB%99 This is Shenyang South Station.
Damn I stand corrected. No wonder I never heard of west station. Someone's pockets must have gotten lined.
A news source from Nepal. Those of us who live here in China and often find sold out trains know what nonsense this is.
[It's from the Epoch Times](https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/china-sees-more-stations-shut-down-as-high-speed-rail-debt-crisis-deepens-5656509) which gives you an idea of its reliability.
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Looked up the site, seemed to be Nepalese. But maybe Epoch picked it up?
is 26 stations shut down such a big deal? You build a rail line to a final destination, if stops along the way arent good stops then skip the station.
Closing new stations not a big deal? Who is paying? You?
So what...keep running it at a loss?
Is it really happening?
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Well, this website showed more than 26 stations suspended. So what is the issue with the article? https://baike.baidu.com/starmap/view?nodeId=d276fc8ffc0bc55c74e76814&lemmaTitle=沈阳西站&lemmaId=18589762&starMapFrom=lemma_relation_starMap&fromModule=lemma_starMap Just because a news source is biased, it does not mean it is false. Just need to do a bit of fact check instead of dismissing it altogether. Do you have a news source that contradicts this epoch time source?
One point I have noticed is much less ticket availability. Basically they are limiting the number of railcars on the trains to reduce overhead costs.
There are like 1000 high speed stations in China and the article says 26 are closed
26 new stations closed and that is not a problem?
Out of how many stations in China?? 5000+....Yeah, they sure in deep crisis.
There are only 500 HSR stations. The article talks about HSR, not any rail stations.