Keith Bradsher, Speedy Trains Transform China; Quicker trips and less pollution, and higher productivity. New York Times, Sept 24, 2013.
Quote:
"The cavernous rail station here [Changsha] for China’s new high-speed trains was nearly deserted when it opened less than four years ago. Not anymore. Practically every train is sold out, although they leave for cities all over the country every several minutes.
"The Chinese government is already struggling with nearly $500 billion in overall rail debt. Most of it was incurred for the high-speed rail system and financed with bank loans
"Train ridership has soared partly because China has set fares on high-speed rail lines at a little less than half of comparable airfares and then refrained from raising them. On routes that are four or five years old, prices have stayed the same as blue-collar wages have more than doubled. That has resulted in many workers, as well as business executives, switching to high-speed trains. Airlines have largely halted service on routes of less than 300 miles when high-speed rail links open. They have reduced service on routes of 300 to 470 miles. The double-digit annual wage increases give the Chinese enough disposable income that domestic airline traffic has still been growing 10 percent a year. That is the second-fastest growth among the world’s 10 largest domestic aviation markets, after India作者: choi 时间: 9-25-2013 08:00 本帖最后由 choi 于 9-25-2013 08:10 编辑
Taiwan High Speed Rail, originally a private company in the mode of Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) was almost bankrupt and basically taken over by the central government.
(1) Taiwan High Speed Rail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_High_Speed_Rail
(based primarily on Japan's Shinkansen technology;
Ridership initially fell short of forecasts, but grew from fewer than 40,000 passengers per day in the first few months of operation to over 129,000 passengers per day in June 2013; "company was put under new management in September 2009 with the aim of turning around the company's finances with government help in arranging refinancing of the loans. The government took majority control of the company after the election of its new board on November 10, 2009")