Travel time shortened due to high-speed rails
As a senior railway official said on March 24, 2009, the two high-speed railways that opened on April 1 amazingly shortened the travel time between the hinterland and the coastal areas.
The Hefei-Wuhan passenger railway and the Hefei-Nanjing lines, which opened last year offered the shortest link between Central China and Yangtze River Delta region of East China. Both of them last over 350km.
Zhang Shuguang, chief of the transportation department of the Ministry of Railways said that the time needed to ride a bullet train from Wuhan to Nanjing at the rate of 250kph was below 3 hours, which was nearly 8 hours less than now. This will also benefit the passengers who travel from Wuhan to Shanghai because the travel time was shortened in half to only 4 hours and 45 minutes.
There is another new type of high-speed railway, which will connect the north and the west, and it is called the 190-km Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan railway. Zhang said that passengers who travel between the capital cities of Hebei and Shanxi Provinces will spend only 1 hour, and the time needed is originally 5 hours. It will cost just 3 hours, which saves more than 5 hours for passengers who want to travel between Taiyuan and Beijing.
Being confronted with the fierce competition, Airlines and bus companies feel the press, so they are lowering the prices.
Wuhan-based Chutian Metropolis News reported that the cost of a bus ticket will be lowered from 185 yuan ($27) to 90 yuan on March 26, 2009 because from April 1 flights from Wuhan to Shanghai will offer the discounts up to 70%.
Zhang said that the ministry would add 89 pairs of passenger trains on many popular routes from next month in order to increase the passenger capacity by 10.6 percent. The ministry is also regarding that they should sell the train tickets through telephone and the Internet, and this practice will be carried out in the area of Guangdong and Chongqing.
Last year China opened its first high-speed railway, which was 350kph Beijing-Tianjin route. Zhang said there are 200 bullet trains travelling through major cities in China at present, and it is planed that more than 600 will be on the tracks till 2012. China’s high-speed rail network finds its own way and it’ll never be a problem for China to secure a train ticket in peak travel seasons.
Some of the bullet trains will have sleepers for travelers. In December, the ministry put such trains on the Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Hangzhou railways, and the price for a sleeper ticket is 600 to 700 yuan.
However, many doubted the popularity of such trains. Zhang said it is good enough that there is an average occupancy rate of 70 percent. He also said in the future, more half-empty trains will be seen than crowded ones by passengers due to the progress of longer railways and better and faster trains.
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