Let consumers decide how fast trains must run

HE HUAWU, chief engineer of China Railway Corp, said last week that high-speed trains can travel up to 350 kilometers an hour without facing any technological difficulty. But the question is: Is that economically viable? The railway authorities should also be careful not to increase the already high speed of trains just to raise their fares, said Zhang Guifeng, a guest commentator with Beijing Youth Daily, on Sunday.

That a senior CRC official said high-speed trains can run faster without any technological glitch shows that faster trains are essentially about economic feasibility, not safety concerns. It also indicates a fare hike in the near future on the pretext of running faster trains, for which the total maintenance cost could increase by one-third. Most high-speed trains in China run at about 300 km per hour as of now.

It is understandable that many people fear that they would be forced to pay one-third more to travel by high-speed trains, because the CRC has been granted the sole fare pricing authority.