User:Bosonghan/sandbox

high-speed rails in China - public concerns

On one hand, the demand of high-speed rail in China steadily increases over time. In 2012, the average occupancy rate of high-speed rails in China is 57%. This percentage increases to 65%, 69.4% and 72.1% in the year of 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively. Up to February 2016, high-speed rails covers nearly 200 thousand kilometers. On the other hand, however, public concerns and questions about the high-speed rail development from various perspectives raises as well.

The safety issue draws the attention of the public and the government after Wenzhou train collision, happened in July 23th 2011, in which 40 people died, 172 injured and 54 related officials blamed and punished. An engineer of China's high-speed rail, who asked not to be named, claimed that he would never take a single ride on China's high-speed railway on his retirement. He complained about the disparity between construction plan and actual construction schedule. "I'm not able to stop any violation to construction plan even if I know such violations may impair the safety of the railway, because it is always the administrative leaders that are making decisions." said the engineer.

The database, however, is telling a different story. With at least 70000 Chinese people died from traffic collision, crashes and rollover every year (this number only include those confirmed by the police), statistically driving is at least 6 to 20 times more likely to result in accidents and deaths comparing to railway transportation.

Besides safety issue, efficiency is also a significant concern that both Chinese and foreign researchers have. In 2013, Chinese railways generate over 2550000 millions Ton-kilometer and nearly 1000000 millions Passenger-kilometer, as the highest freight mover and the second highest passenger mover (the largest passenger mover is India, with slightly higher Passenger-kilometer index). However, the rail staff productivity upon railway track infrastructure index in China is less than 0.05, being the lowest among the countries with significant railway construction. The government also articulated the importance and urgency of assuring the capacity of railway staff, especially their familiarity with telecommunication and signaling testing in the official investigation of the Wenzhou train collision. In addition, it is hard to identify problems in the construction process, given the distribution resource planning system needed for rapid railway building and assembling. Suppliers and manufacturers blame each other for any problem detected in the trial operation, while tracking the construction process to every single detail is an almost impossible job for inspectors.

Despite China having the second largest route-kilometer growth after Turkey since 2017, whether constructing high-speed railways in China is economically efficient has been a hot debate. Conservative scholars and officials are worried about the profitability of high-speed railway construction, and its influence on low income population. While all high-speed rails built on the eastern part of China except Beijing-Tianjin high-speed rail have started to make positive profit since 2015, the middle-west railways are constantly loss-making and far from being even possible to pay their cost off. Zhengzhou–Xi'an high-speed railway is estimated to run 59 trains in 2010 and 125 trains in 2018, yet in 2016 there are merely around 30 trains on operation, causing a 1.4 billion loss. Guizhou–Guangxi railway and Lanzhou–Xinjiang railway are both suffering from high maintenance cost due to harsh climate conditions and complicated terrain structure.