25 new rail systems for Chinese cities

[CHamilton]

Profitable or Not, China Doubles Down on Investments in New Metro Systems

» Central government approves 25 new rail projects in cities across the country, worth hundreds of billions of dollars of new construction.

With China's growth slowing — a product of internal economic changes as well as the continued poor performance of the U.S. and Europe — the country's government has decided to accelerate investments in its cities' rapid transit networks as part of a larger transportation infrastructure program. About $127 billion (or 800 billion yuan) is to be directed over the next three to eight years to build 25 subways and elevated rail lines as a stimulus whose major benefit will be a increase in mobility for the rapidly urbanizing nation.

Though China's high-speed rail network (now the largest in the world) has garnered most of the headlines when it comes to transportation there, the nation's investments in urban rail have been just as dramatic and serve far more people on a daily basis. Its three largest metropolitan areas — Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing — feature the world's fourth, fifth, and sixth most-used transit systems, providing more than five million rides each daily, more than similar networks in New York or Paris. Most of these cities' lines opened since 2000.

 

[Anderson]

My gut here is that China is desperately trying to head off rising oil demand across the board, not to mention increasing pollution problems. People don't want to fight their way through traffic on a bike anymore on the one hand and air pollution in places like Beijing is getting to be a somewhat legendary problem, so China is scrambling to throw together mass transit systems. The other hangup, of course, is that traffic problems are also becoming legendary in many areas, especially where there's really not space to add lots of new roads.

To be fair, China could in theory simply force the price of cars and/or fuel up, but that would likely trigger all sorts of unrest...so the answer is going to be a mad scramble to get people off the roads...which is what we're seeing with the HSR projects as well.

What is amazing, though, is the sheer scale and scope of the systems: Beijing's mass transit system is looking to be about three times the size of the NYC Subway, and Shanghai is looking to be nearly twice NYC's size. Guangzhou is going to be over double as well.*

Of course, looking at how bad the pollution is getting, I'm starting to wonder how long it is going to be until Beijing starts looking like something out of Blade Runner or Avatar's implied version of Earth.

*All of this, of course, excludes the massive MTA system (LIRR and MNRR) as well as NJT.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I must admit it was really weird seeing China working hard on building modern world class networks while we're still busy nursing a national system that's two or three whole generations behind. Best case we're looking at another decade of 1980's technology. Oh, but we have buses. Lots and lots of buses. Well, in some cases fewer buses than we had previously, but we still have some. :-/

 

[Anderson]

One thought that comes to mind: It's a pity that Obama didn't really shoot for the moon with the stimulus in terms of transit, in the vein of this. I can't help but wonder what could've been done with $50-100 billion plus some cuts to red tape.