主题：关于中国的高铁网 -- mandman

上个月美国的航空专业期刊《Aviation Week & Space Technology》刊载了题为《Run Over by a Train》的文章，分析了中国的航空业将面临来自高铁的严重冲击，这种冲击现在被低估了。明年京沪高铁通车后，将和中国的第一黄金航线形成面对面的竞争，那时候就可以一见分晓了。

文中也提到，2020版的高铁网对中国人口密集地区的完全覆盖，中国航空业的远景并不美妙。（当然，这对中国人民来说，可是一件大好事啊！）

中国人口密度－高铁网复合图

（未名网友desesperado友情提供）

Run Over by a Train

Aviation Week & Space Technology

April 19, 2010

BYLINE: Bradley Perrett

SECTION: Air Transport; Pg. 47 Vol. 172 No. 15

Bradley Perrett/Beijing

A battle between China Southern Airlines and a fast rail line will help reveal how badly high-speed trains will undercut Chinese carriers over the coming decade.

The airlines are at least facing a few years of stunted growth as the railways ministry progressively commissions the world’s largest high-speed rail system, on which it will run the world’s fastest long-distance trains.

The severity of the damage should become more apparent from the first major clash between Chinese airliners and 350-kph. (220-mph.) trains, now raging along the line between two of the country’s largest cities, Guangzhou and Wuhan.

The competition on the Guangzhou-Wuhan route is the acid test, says K. Ajith, airlines analyst at brokerage UOB Kay Hian.

If China Southern can maintain a sizable business on the route, then the future may not be so bad for the airlines. If the trains force it to reduce its flights to a token service or even quit the route, then prospects in other major markets will be bleak.

In the longer term, there is another threat to Chinese airlines: motorization. Unlike the U.S.—where automobile ownership was common before the Boeing 707 introduced fast, comfortable and economic air travel in 1958—China has built a strong aviation industry before the masses have had the money to fully exploit the country’s growing motorway system. Chinese airlines are not yet facing much competition from the idea of simply packing bags in the car and hitting the road.

The threat from the railways is obvious from a glance at a map of the new high-speed system superimposed on China’s population densities (see map).

The lines not only join tens of important city pairs with straight runs; in many cases, intersecting lines create practical connections between major cities with only moderately indirect routes. Not shown on the map is the old network, which is always being upgraded and will connect with the new one.

Altogether, the railways ministry proposes that its high-speed network will serve 90% of Chinese people.

The network is already affecting the airlines. In April 2009, fast rail lines opened between Shanghai and Wuhan and between Beijing and Taiyuan. China Southern says its traffic dropped 30% on the former route and 60% on the latter. And neither line is running China’s fastest trains.

Construction of the high-speed rail network hardly means the death of the Chinese airline industry. The trains will not conveniently connect every city pair, they will lose competitiveness as travel distance rises, and the air carriers can fight back by improving their efficiency. Moreover, China’s rapid economic growth means that the transport pie is expanding.

But it is clear that many short routes will be lost to the airlines altogether, while some services longer than an hour will at least suffer ferocious competition from a transport mode that offers few of the hassles of air travel and much greater reliability. In many cases, the competition is appearing where it will hurt most: The railways ministry naturally focused on the choicest travel markets as it drew up plans for its network, which is due for completion in 2020.

High-speed rail is often reckoned to compete with, or simply defeat, airlines over distances of up to 800 km., although the exact threshold distance depends on the speed.

Many of the old Chinese lines have been upgraded to handle 200-kph. trains. In the new network, some lines run at 200-250 kph. and can be upgraded to 300 kph., making them comparable with such systems in Europe and Japan.

But most of the new Chinese lines will from the beginning offer speeds of up to 350 kph., faster than any elsewhere. And a 380-kph. train is under development for the 1,318-km. Beijing-Shanghai line now under construction, threatening the premier air route in China with a 4-hr. rail service.

Because China’s trains are so fast, they should be competitive over greater distances than are those that have expelled European and Japanese airlines from major routes. China Southern expects air routes as long as 1,200 km. to suffer from fast-rail competition. That includes Beijing-Shanghai, whose straight-line distance is 1,070 km.

The process of air-route elimination has begun in China. A high-speed rail line opened between Xi’an (pop. 7.4 million) and Zhengzhou (3.2 million) on Feb. 6. On March 25, an airliner flew the route for the last time.

That was only a skirmish, however, because the air traffic was not great and the short distance, 440 km., favored the railway.

The first fast-rail assault on a major Chinese air route has been underway since Dec. 26, when the first section of the main north-south line opened, connecting Guangzhou (pop. 12 million) with Wuhan (9 million) 840 km. away in 3 hr. The distance, near the usual threshold for rail-air competition, means that defeat for the airline would imply great challenges in defending other major routes.

China Southern prepared for battle before the trains began running by introducing express check-in for the route and increasing its flights to 16 daily from 12, against the 21 daily trains each with 1,100-1,200 seats. Its traffic fell anyway and so did the fares.

The airline is now offering six daily flights on the route, suggesting a 50% loss of business, but analyst Ajith suggests that the route should be watched for longer to assess the final damage. So far, it can at least be said that China Southern has not had to surrender the service, which also feeds international flights from its Guangzhou Baiyun hub.

China Southern Chairman Si Xianmin says the airline must respond to the rail threat by increasing international services to 30% of its operations from the current 17%.

Based in Beijing and Shanghai, respectively, Air China and China Eastern Airlines have not yet had to deal with trains charging out of their home towns toward important markets at 350 kph. But the railways ministry’s contractors are working on it.

Ajith expects airline growth to slump as the fast lines are opened between now and 2020. For example, he sees just 4.8% growth in air traffic for 2012, compared with rates near 15% before theglobal economic downturn began in 2008.

If the fast-rail system does not grow further after 2020—a big if—then the airlines should settle down to a constant share of the long-distance market and grow at the same rate, something like the rate of economic growth, perhaps 7%, Ajith says.

There is another risk, he adds. There have been complaints from Chinese people that the train fares are too high. If they are reduced, then the trains will be even more competitive.

The train fares could fall because, as the airlines’ supporters point out, the fast-rail system seems to be uneconomic. Making early profits is evidently not part of the railways ministry’s thinking.

The Guangzhou-Wuhan line would have to carry 5 million passengers a year, about a quarter of the cities’ combined population, just to cover its construction cost at only 3% interest, calculates Wang Xiangsui, director of the strategic research center at the Beijing Aviation and Aeronautics University. The cost-effectiveness and investment return is still questionable, he told the China Commercial Aircraft conference in Shanghai on March 25.

One justification for the implicit subsidy is that fast trains emit far less carbon dioxide than aircraft—about a tenth per passenger-kilometer according to British government calculations. Global warming is not a hot topic in China, but it is likely to become a more serious policy issue over the coming decade—maybe just in time for the railways ministry to suggest further expansion of its high-speed network.

Depending on the topography, the current plan leaves opportunities for later, straighter lines between big city pairs, including Beijing-Shang