
China Rides the Railroads to Boost Its Slowing Economy - JumpCrisscross
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-rides-the-railroads-to-boost-its-slowing-economy-11577788201
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mytailorisrich
Rail is a good option for fast-ish travel in China despite the size of the
country (which is the size of the USA) because of the population size and
specific travel patterns.

Although they are also investing massively in air travel, I think it is simply
not practical to deliver the capacity needed, not least the peak capacity.

They have very large cities within a few hundreds of km of each other and a
huge number of people travel at the same time during the national and Chinese
new year holidays. Trains allow them to ferry literally hundreds of millions
of people across the country within a few days in a way that planes can't
really do.

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melling
“The roughly 100-mile rail line will shorten the commute to Xi’an to 40
minutes from the current three-hour bus or four-hour train ride.”

