China bends the curve on high-speed rail

Built at a cost of more than US $630 billion, China's 37,000-kilometer high-speed rail system is the biggest single transportation infrastructure investment in modern world history. Two billion passengers traveled by HSR within China in 2019, three times as many as traveled by air. In terms of passenger-kilometers, a measure that combines the number of HSR passengers with how far they traveled, China's 774 billion HSR passenger-kilometers of travel in 2019 exceeded second-place Japan's thirteen times over. What's especially amazing about all these statistics is that China didn't commit to building a HSR network until 2004, and its first HSR line didn't open for service until 2008. Among the many infrastructure takeaways offered by China's HSR experiences are that being a first-adopter is less important than learning from prior practice; that there is no substitute for a long-term commitment from top government leadership; that there are significant delivery time and cost savings benefits to design and construction standardization; and that China's government-initiated joint venture financing model offers a well-tested alternative to the standard government-funded model and to the private sector-oriented public-private partnership (P3) model. Among the less positive lessons offered by China's HSR program are that sponsoring agencies need to be concerned about potential conflicts of interest and a lack of public transparency, and that inter-city rail projects rarely generate promised levels of secondary economic and property development benefits.