The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s proposed USD43 billion Los Angeles-San Francisco link has proved a tough sell to investors and lawmakers. This process wasn’t helped by the US budget deal wiping USD1.5 billion of high-speed rail funding. For business travelers, however, it may represent too good an opportunity to pass up.
President Obama is a proponent of the high-speed reinvigoration of the US transport system – at a time when infrastructure investment is lagging behind emerging nations like China. The China connection is inevitable. After all, a company owned by China State Construction Engineering Corp., is bidding for a stake to design and build the California high-speed railway. Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley recently visited Beijing to ride a bullet train to the city of Tianjin. Chicago plans to build a similar line between O’Hare Airport and downtown areas.
The UK has also dragged its feet on developing a 250mph rail link between London, Birmingham and Leeds. This long-running saga may yet see construction of the London-Birmingham section begin in 2017, with the Leeds-Manchester line slated for 2032.
Meanwhile, China is speeding ahead with its high-speed rail rollout. The Ministry of Railways is investing RMB700 billion (USD107 billion) into railway construction in 2011 alone. At the end of 2010, China had 8,358 km of high-speed track in operation, which will nearly double to 16,000 by 2015. California’s new rail link will not open until at least 2020.
China’s fastest trains travel at 243 mph, cutting the journey between giant cities like Wuhan and Guangzhou from 11 hours to around three. From June, the new Beijing-Shanghai railway will connect China’s two largest cities in less than five hours.
The knock-on impact of advanced rail travel is being felt. Li Jiaxiang, Director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, recently said more than 50 percent of domestic flight routes of less than 500km, and 20 percent of 800-1000km routes, will become unprofitable due to advance rail competition.
High-speed railways are not new, of course. Since October 1964, travelers have sped around Japan on the 168mph shinkansen network. Today, 341 snub-nosed ‘bullet’ trains carry almost 400,000 people per day. Korea boasts sleek, super-fast trains, and is working with Japan to create a cross-border network. Earlier this year, France celebrated 30 years of the 200mph TGV rail system that connects 200 European towns, and whose history includes a train interior revamp by Christian Lacroix. Spain’s AVE network opened in 1992, and has grabbed 50 percent market share on the Madrid-Barcelona route.
The experiences of these countries have delivered four primary high-speed rail benefits for business travelers:
Direct city-to-city transportation. Rail stations are usually located in central areas of a city, so the protracted journey time to and from an airport located on the urban fringe is significantly reduced.
Comfort and speed. Overland travel can be fast, efficient and comfortable. Plus there are no takeoff and landing restrictions on laptops and cellphone usage. Sit down, switch on and start working until arrival at your destination.
Price competition. High-speed rail provides direct competition to airlines on key inter-city routes. As China is now discovering, this causes fierce pricing competition, plus marketing challenges for rail operators and airlines to attract and retain passengers.
Punctuality. If efficiently operated, high-speed networks avoid the delays often associated with air travel. Japan’s shinkansen ‘bullet’ trains have an average delay of just 30 seconds.
History shows that railways emerged to challenge river and canal transportation, but the future will see air travel and high-speed rail going head to head. For business travelers, a new golden age of rail travel may be – albeit rather slowing – emerging into view.
This blog has been commissioned by AmEx.
About Gary Bowerman:
Oxford-born Gary Bowerman has travelled the world in search of a good story. After cutting his teeth in legal and tax publishing in London, Gary moved on to edit international business and travel titles before relocating to China in 2004. Resident in Shanghai, he has recently been a contributor to CNN Traveller, Business Traveler,CNBC Europe Business, New York Times, Travel & Leisure and South China Morning Post. Editor of the Singapore Highlights and Beijing Highlights guides, Gary is also one of the founders of Hong Kong and Shanghai-based media and marketing communications agency Scribes of the Orient.
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