Renewal and Development of Intercity Passenger Rail System: A Case of China

Abstract

China’s new intercity passenger rail system has been expanding at an impressive rate, with several thousand miles being constructed or put into operation annually; attesting to this enormous expansion is the cumulative ridership of billions of passengers. China’s rapid progress in its intercity passenger rail system has a global impact; sharing the experiences of high-speed rail has become a crucial diplomatic strategy for China, and the progress itself has engaged the interest of many countries in developing their intercity passenger rail systems. The case of China can shed light on the global development of intercity passenger rail systems from the perspective of systematic transformations of transit systems. This paper ( a) demonstrates the reasons behind China’s choice of constructing a comprehensive rail system and their impact on China’s development of its intercity passenger rail system and ( b) analyzes the level of development and the framework of the system. The paper then describes China’s national high-speed rail (HSR) system, regional intercity passenger rail system, and commuter rail system in detail and demonstrates the experiences and problems encountered in the course of development of the intercity passenger rail system by addressing ( a) the competition between HSR and air transportation, ( b) the regional economic impacts, ( c) the speed limits of regional intercity passenger rail systems, ( d) the impacts of the regional intercity passenger rail system on passenger flow along the lines, and ( e) the obstacles that the commuter rail systems face; and reflects upon these phenomena on the basis of statistical facts.