FEATURE: Travel nightmare on a slow train in China

Asian Economic News, July 23, 2001

BEIJING, July 20, Kyodo

If traveling by train in China, don't be surprised to find yourself heading for hours in the opposite direction to the desired destination.

Let's say, you want to travel from Yichang in Hubei Province to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, which is due south.

You board the No. 555 service, which duly pulls out of Yichang -- heading north. It continues in that direction for four hours, covering 244 kilometers, before finally turning south. Twenty-four hours after the journey began, the train pulls into Guangzhou, having covered 1,647 km.

But if the train had headed south from Yichang and immediately connected to the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway, the length of the journey would be seven to nine hours and nearly 500 km shorter.

One reason why it doesn't do so is because the ticket price is based on actual mileage -- so, a longer trip means more money. The detour for No. 555 means it can charge an extra 22 yuan (about $2.60) for each standard seat ticket, 45 yuan more for a standard sleeper ticket and 74 yuan more for each luxury sleeper ticket.

If the train is equipped with air conditioning, the fare is even higher.

But that is not the only reason for the meandering journey, according to a recent investigation by the China Business Times. The train belongs to the Zhengzhou Railway Bureau in Henan Province, and the longer it stays in the bureau's territory, the more money the latter makes from operating the train.

Taking the roundabout route means the train can stop at a dozen additional railway stations in Hubei Province. Taking the direct route would mean leaving Zhengzhou Bureau territory almost immediately, giving almost all ticket revenue to the Guangzhou Railway Group Corp., the newspaper explained.

For the moment, the Zhengzhou Bureau can get away with this practice due to its monopoly position. There are only three flights a week from Yichang to Guangzhou and most travelers cannot afford the airfare, while the bus journey would be too horrendous to contemplate.

Zhengzhou is not alone. A train from Shanghai to Kunming makes an illogical detour that adds several hundred kilometers to the trip. Trains traveling from Beijing to Xiamen, southern China, detour via the overcrowded line to Shanghai instead of the under-utilized direct route, the Beijing-Kowloon (Hong Kong) line.

Such practices are one of the reasons frustrating government efforts to speed up rail travel and lure back passengers and goods lost to other means of transportation.

A massive rail construction program is under way to build new high-speed lines and upgrade existing ones through such means as double-tracking.

Construction will start soon on a new 12 billion yuan Beijing-Shanghai passenger line, modeled on Japan's bullet trains, which the Chinese greatly admire, if it does not adopt untried magnetic levitation technology being offered by Germany.

Meanwhile, China's first high-speed electric train rolled off the assembly line at the Changchun Passenger Train Factory last year and went into service on the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Railway. It has reached 230 km per hour -- compared with the top speed of 120 kph for existing express services, which is rarely ever achieved under normal operating conditions.

This was followed recently by a high-speed train known as the Blue Arrow, which can operate on the same line at speeds of up to 305 kph, suggesting China may try to go it alone rather than rely on foreigners when building expensive high-speed rails linking its major cities.

''The production of the train shows that China has obtained an edge over the world's high-speed traction technology,'' Wang Dianzuo, vice director of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Xinhua News Agency.

Even so, the new train is significantly slower than similar trains developed in other parts of the world. Japan's bullet train has a reported top speed of 443 kph, and France's TGV reaches 515 kph.

Speed over long distances on dedicated lines, however, is seen as the only way for passenger trains to remain competitive in the mainland.

Cheap (state-subsidized) ticket prices and a large number of passengers traveling short distances have, for decades, taken up railway transport capacity and affected its economic performance.

Recent adjustments in railway transportation policy and ticket prices has now pushed some of the medium- and short-distance passengers to switch to other means of transportation, especially highways. This has resulted in a proportional increase in long-distance passengers as well as improved service.

Following upgrades of lines along some of the country's most popular routes, the Ministry of Railways has announced that trains will begin traveling at faster speeds from October. It is the fourth announced increase in recent years, and the second within 12 months.

The ministry said five routes linking major cities in southwest, central and southern China would be the pioneers, including the Beijing-Kowloon line, where speeds up to 140 kph would be permitted.