China's high-speed trains may be a ticket to trouble

A high-speed train runs on the newly built Zhengzhou-Xi'an railway in Zhengzhou. Donald Chan / Reuters

The global leader in superfast rail networks could find it needs to slow down and have a think about it. It appears break-even for the system is a long way down the line

China now has the longest network of high-speed trains in the world, stretching 8,358km and growing.

So you would think the Chinese masses criss-crossing this large country to celebrate the Lunar New Year recently would be zipping across the nation in comfort.

But as always in China, the ground-level reality differs from the cheery news dished out by the officials. The queues of migrant workers trying to return home were as bad as ever and there was an active black market in train tickets, mainly the cheaper ones.

The truth is most Chinese cannot afford to take the high-speed trains because they come with high ticket prices, sometimes even more than the airfare for the same destination.

Evidence is emerging that the high-speed train system, while it looks good to foreigners and well-off Chinese, may be a white elephant project to which all centrally planned economies are prone.

The investment reality is these train systems are not only expensive to build, they are expensive to maintain.

This means there is not much hope in the foreseeable future of ticket prices coming down if the system is to break even at the operating level, let alone recoup the enormous investments being made.

The ministry of railways is investing 700 billion yuan (Dh390.14bn) a year and the network will increase by more than 30 per cent to about 13,000km by next year, which means the problem of breaking even will be exacerbated in coming years.

Faced with a public that is unwilling to subsidise the prestige by buying expensive tickets the railways, which are a monopoly, are doing what a monopolies are wont to do - cutting back the services of slow-speed trains so passengers will be forced on to the high-speed network.

Of course, the migrant workers, who already spend a good portion of their wages on transport back home for the only long holiday they get during the Chinese New Year, were not happy about this.

Unable to get the cheap train tickets, some of them started travelling on the buses, which are less suited for long-distance travel and further congest the roads.

For too long the "greens" and others concerned about the environment and the need for "alternative" energy have considered the railways and the fast-speed trains a panacea.

China is not only racing ahead with the trains connecting different cities but also with the metros connecting areas within cities.

There are about 1,400km of urban railways in China but the network is forecast to grow to 2,200km by 2015, and China is expected to overtake the US in having the longest urban railway network as early as next year.

The speed of construction is unprecedented and there are fears that even the respected Chinese engineering skills may be severely tested trying to maintain quality at such breakneck speeds.

The economic and environmental case for urban rail networks is better than that for the intra-city, high-speed trains.

But it remains to be seen whether the urban networks, extremely complicated projects at the best of times, built at great speed in China may be prone to problems in the future.