High-speed railways in China : an update on passenger profiles

Two Chinese high-speed rail (HSR) projects supported by World Bank loans - the Nanning-Guangzhou (Nanguang) and Guiyang-Guangzhou (Guiguang) - began operations in late December 2014. The services have connected the peripheral provinces of Guangxi and Guizhou to the economically advanced province of Guangdong. The travel time between Nanning and Guangzhou was reduced from 13 hours to three hours, 19 minutes and that between Guiyang and Guangzhou from 21 hours to four hours, nine minutes, thus making a step change to transport access. The World Bank has conducted surveys on board the high speed and conventional trains in the Nanguang and Guiguang corridors to understand the profiles of the passengers and the extent to which the new services have influenced how they travel on those two routes. This has expanded our evidence base to cover the South China routes, building on the surveys we conducted previously between Changchun-Jilin in the North East, and between Tianjin and Jinan on the Beijing-Shanghai line.