Rail expert Hans-Joachim Zierke has some interesting insights on China’s efforts to modernize its transportation infrastructure.
I’ll quote his entire misc.transport.rail.americas Usenet posting:
The Chinese are the only people with a government that fully understands what can be done with a railroad.
European or Japanese governments don’t understand freight rail American governments don’t understand passenger rail. Both leads to underutilization.
Let’s have a look at current figures first I have already posted them in May:
| Country | Network length | Transport volume | ton mile/route mile |
| China 2006 | 47600 mi | 1.97 trillion ton-miles | 41.4 million ton-mi/mi |
| USA 2005 | 95830 mi* | 1.68 trillion ton-miles | 17.5 million ton-mi/mi |
* Only Class 1
| Country | Network length | Transport volume | passenger mile/route mile |
| China 2006 | 47600 mi | 411 billion passenger mi | 8.6 million passenger-mi/mi |
| Germany 2006 | 21500 mi | 49 billion passenger mi | 2.3 million passenger-mi/mi |
Therefore as things currently stand they already transport twice the USA freight and three times the EU passengers per track mile ON THE SAME NETWORK. They do those things which are impossible if you trust into this newsgroup (or an USA Class 1 manager).
That’s what they are able to do today but at the moment they clear 10000 km for container doublestacking buy US design cars for it and EU design electric locos for their new standard of running doublestack 5000t (5512 ton) intermodals with a single six-axle loco of 9600 kW (12874 hp) in front at 120 km/h (75 mph). This means that their freight transport speed using their currently defined standard trains will match US trucking speed without burning a single drop of oil.
After an unsuccessful attempt to implement high-speed rail based on Chinese technology (“China Star” developed for 250 km/h but running at 160 km/h) they now do it based on Japanese and European technology on separate track. Mixed-usage tracks are upgraded towards 200 km/h.
Railroads have been built at 1000 km / year but are supposed to get built at 4000 km / year (2485 mi / year) for keeping up with demand. This figure does not include the doubletracking projects. Investment into railroad infrastructure roughly matches that of the rest of the world.
So my prediction for 2020 is: China will transport as much railfreight as US trucking and US railroads combined will do this at the speed of US trucking will have the largest high-speed passenger network on the planet (while the USA will have none) plus tenthousands of mixed-usage track miles cleared for 125 mph. Their high-speed network will see more passenger miles than all USA domestic flights combined and these passenger miles will require half the energy. And after summing all this up they will not have burned a single drop of oil for it.
Now the wider picture: At the moment energy intensity of the USA economy is still much better than Chinas thanks to absurd efficiency of their old power plants and the laughable old state economy industry. But they are building > 40% efficient coal plants at fast pace and their industry is improving rapidly especially in the private sector.
So by 2020 I don’t expect any advantage of the USA regarding the energy intensity of industry and power generation. And China will be miles ahead in the transport sector. Such result means that
1) the additional demand by China drives the oil price further up while
2) China will need less oil for producing a $ of GDP.
With this situation slowly trickling down into the brains of congress members we WILL see change on the railroads. But for years to come I expect exactly nothing.
I also don’t expect to see urgent changes to EU freight railroading happening very soon.
Hans-Joachim