According to a new World Bank paper,” High-Speed Railways in China: A Look at Traffic”, relating to China high-speed rail ridership, the traffic registered a growth from 128 million trips in 2008 to 672 million trips in 2013 and over 2.9 billion passengers having taken a high speed train trip between April 2007 and October 1st 2014.
In 2013, China’s high-speed rail lines carried more passenger-kilometers (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 paper underlines that the circumstances in China in terms of long distances, high population density, well interspaced large cities, and its economic rebalancing strategies are propitious for the long-term success of HSR. By focusing on understanding and addressing passenger needs, as well as efficient and effective operation, traffic can be expected to continue rapid growth over the coming two decades.
The paper looks at China’ s HSR traffic in a global perspective and presents case studies of one of the country’s busiest routes and a relatively lightly used intercity route to illustrate how passengers have responded to new HSR services.
China has over 12,000 kilometers of passenger-dedicated high-speed rail in operation. In the summer 2014, China Railways was running over 1,330 pairs of high-speed trains a day on both this dedicated network and on upgraded conventional lines. More lines are being built and upgraded to connect all cities of more than 500,000 people through rapid rail by 2015.
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