The commuter's comment intrigues. I don't know much about Chinese pay scales, but she can spend 38 yuan (about US $5.56) to knock an hour off her commute. The use of hourly wages as a measure of the value of time saved by a faster train service is controversial, and it's complicated further where a commuter is making a choice between driving or leaving the driving to somebody else.Li Jing needs to travel back home from Beijing to Tianjin every weekend to be with her family, but the ticket price for the high-speed railway between the two municipalities is too high for her.
"It is ok if you take it once a year, but too costly for frequent commuters like me and many others," said Li, an employee with a Beijing-based international trade company.
A second-class ticket costs 58 yuan ($8.49) for the 120 kilometer trip, which takes 30 minutes. Ordinary trains between the two cities take around 90 minutes, but only cost about 20 yuan ($2.93).
A related issue revolves around the productive use of travel time, since in some cases, due to technologies available en route, travel time may no longer be “lost” to productive business. The standard example on this front is the use of laptops on trains and planes, where work can be done almost as from the workplace. More investigation is needed into the effect of this phenomenon.The comparison of the fast train and the ordinary train is also instructive.
The fast train runs at an average speed of 240 km/h (approximately 150 mph). That's above the maximum speed diesel trains have maintained: we're looking at electric trains with special catenary, and under North American safety regulations, special signalling, no road crossings, and no mixing with freight trains. Providing that kind of fast train gets expensive.
The ordinary train maintains an average speed of 80 km/h (approximately 50 mph, nominal for many Amtrak trains and attained by some of Metra's limited stop commuter trains.) There's nothing magic in running trains at such speeds, and under North American regulations, road crossings are an acceptable hazard and mixing with freight trains standard practice.
But in the Chinese example is the heart of my case for giving trains free rein to 110 under track and signalling conditions that prevailed prior to World War II. In the Chinese example, that would be a train averaging 180 km/h and completing this run in 40 minutes. (My calculation would be skewed by intermediate stops, or by average speeds short of the maximum permitted speed). Here, though, is the essence of my case: relaxing some of the existing regulations and using known diesel technology gets you a 240 km (75 mile) trip in 40 to 45 minutes. The additional expenditure on electrification and grade separation and banishing the freight trains reduces running times by ten to fifteen minutes. Perhaps a much higher fare, attracting only riders with a high opportunity cost of their time, is a feature, but I suspect that the benefit-cost ratio of a slightly slower service at a substantially lower cost priced at a lower fare is more favorable than that of the ultrafast train service.
1 comments:
The argument against higher speeds on tracks shared with freight (and without automatic train stop) is of course based on safety: however, a proper analysis would probably show that (at least in the U.S.) the increased diversion of auto traffic to rail that would be enabled by higher speeds would still be a net plus for safety. Ditto if lighter-weight passenger cars were used.
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