[seanmcdirmid]

If you only know the top number but not the bottom one, you can't really compute utilization. Also, spring festival (Chinese new year) means much of the utilization comes "all at once", so the trains are packed for a few weeks each year, but can be much more empty the rest of the year. Anyways, it isn't as simple as laying more tracks between cities.

[_coldfire]

A solid overview of Chinese HSR:

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/high-speed/chinese-high...

>In 2013, Chinese high-speed traffic reached 214 billion passenger-km, slightly more traffic than the rest of the world's high-speed networks combined

>the CRC network is already one of the most densely used in the world, with robust growth between 2009 and 2013. Overall passenger traffic grew by 5.5% per year during this period reaching 2.1 billion passengers or 1060 billion passenger-km in 2013. Railfreight grew by 6% per year to 3.6 billion tonnes, or 2633 billion tonne-km in 2013. These are large volumes compared with the size of the network (103,100km in 2013).

[seanmcdirmid]

http://www.rediff.com/business/report/pix-beijing-shanghai-b...

> Although the railway authority has said that the Beijing- Shanghai high-speed railway was the only profitable high-speed rail in China in the past five years, some believe that other lines in densely-populated and developed regions will likely become profitable soon.

Only Beijing to Shanghai is making a profit ATM (flying is still cheaper on that route, but airport delays are way too bad).

[_coldfire]

Train networks around the world are usually subsidised and run at a loss, it's hardly unique to China.

[seanmcdirmid]

China is running at a loss in the billions. In 2018 when the first HSR bonds start coming due, it could be quite a shock.

[soperj]

All I'm hearing is anecdotes, which is fine if there's no data, but when it doesn't jive with what other data says, I'm not really going to trust the anecdotes over what the data says.

[seanmcdirmid]

So what is your bottom number? Don't trust data from the central government, they aren't known for being very honest with their numbers.