Riding the shinkansen in China

A TBS reporter takes a trip on China’s new overnight bullet train between Shanghai and Beijing:

The bullet trains were partially built in Japan using a JR shinkansen as a base, but have been changed a bit to meet the needs of China’s rail system. Because of the great distances traveled by the Chinese bullet trains, it has sleeper cars and dining cars.

The trip between Beijing and Shanghai takes about 10 hours and costs around 10,000 yen, which is cheaper than an air ticket between the two cities. Passengers interviewed comment on how they are impressed with the speed, safety, and spaciousness of the train.

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8 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - December 23, 2008 at 10:32 pm

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Jack Elliot

I have a question, as a non-fluent Japanese speaker: is the reporter speaking with a Chinese accent?

LOD

No. The reporter is Japanese.

http://jnewsetc.blogspot.com/ FPS

I wish more places would adopt high-speed train travel between major hubs (perhaps Maglevs?). Parts of Asia and Europe have decent train service, but for North America it’s severely lacking by comparison.
jc

Intercity high speed rail service in North America is a four-letter word to the CAW/UAW, the Big Three, the oil industry, and the various passenger coach companies. We’ll never see HSR here unless a perfect storm – $4+/gallon gasoline, zero sabotage attempts by the auto industry/unions, constructive government intervention and assistance, and oodles of public will – emerges.
Level3

It’s not really some evil conspiracy that prevents HSR in the USA. It’s geography.

Comparing all the small-ish European countries and even (relative to the USA) not-so-large Japan is apples and oranges.
It there a cross-Europe HSR train? London-Ankara or London-Moscow would still be a shorter distance than NYC-LA.

A shinkansen-speed train from NYC to LA would take about 20 hours, if there were no stops and no delays. It could never compete with a 6-hour plane trip, and probably could never be as “cheap” as an airline ticket since you’d have to buy sleeper car tickets.

A HSR system might work in the Northeast Corridor DC – NYC, maybe extended out to Boston. But they can’t even get the regular Amtrak trains to run on time. Though Amtrak is a lot more popular there these days, no security checks, and right to the city center, so it ends up being almost as fast as a plane ride over the same distance.
http://www.dragonhunting.com james

Just a FYI, plane tickets for the 2 hour flight between Beijing and Shanghai are most definitely not 10000 yen, they are like 5000 on average.

Until they get the really fast trains running that are supposed to cut the time to around 5 hours…I’d stick with the skies.
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Riding the shinkansen in China

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