Publication: High-Speed Rail: The Fast Track to Economic Development?
Date
2010-07
ISSN
Published
2010-07
Author(s)
Amos, Paul
Bullock, Dick
Sondhi, Jitendra
Abstract
A high-speed rail service can deliver
competitive advantage over airlines for journeys of up to
about 3 hours or 750 km, particularly between city pairs
where airports are located far from city centres. One
suitable type of corridor is that which connects two large
cities 250-500 km apart. But another promising situation is
a longer corridor that has very large urban centres located,
say, every 150-300 km apart. On these longer corridors,
typical of some being built in China, high-speed rail has
the ability to serve multiple city-pairs, both direct and
overlapping. The overall financial performance of high-speed
train services depends on enough people being able to pay a
premium to use them. In Japan there is a surcharge for
high-speed rail which doubles the fare on conventional
services. China high-speed train fares are about three times
conventional train fares. But in order to generate the
required volume of passengers it will usually be necessary
not only to target the most affluent travelers but also to
adopt a fare structure that is affordable for the middle
income population and, if any spare capacity still exists,
to offer discount tickets with restrictions on use and
availability that can fill otherwise unused seats. The
combination of supportive features that exist on the eastern
plains of China including very high population density,
rapidly growing disposable incomes, and the prevalence of
many large cities in reasonable proximity to one another
(creating not just one city-pair but a string of such pairs)
are not found in most developing countries. Nor could all
countries assemble the focused collective capacity building
effort and the economies of scale in construction costs that
arise when a government can commit the country, politically
and economically, to a decades-long program over a vast land
area. Even in China, the sustainability of railway debt
arising from the program as it proceeds will need to be
closely monitored and payback periods will not be short, as
they cannot be for such "lumpy" and long-lived
assets. But a combination of those factors that create
favorable conditions of both demand and supply comes
together in China in a way that is distinctly favorable to
delivering a successful high-speed rail system.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Amos, Paul; Bullock, Dick; Sondhi, Jitendra. 2010. High-Speed Rail: The Fast Track to Economic Development?. © World Bank, Beijing. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27812 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”