Back to the HSR, today went on my weekly TZ to WZ ride. The train was 20 minutes late, not a big deal. They still haven't fixed the signal issue because we actually saw the guy who is manning the switch. There was a temporary power loss while we were coasting through the area where they are still repairing.

The most interesting part of this trip is the load factor. Try nobody on the back 3 and front 5 cabins. My wife and I had to share a whole cabin with 4 other people only.

The trainmaster said, "there is nobody on this train so pick any seat you want."

How long do you think the low loads will continue? Into October and National Day holiday travel? Should I be requesting seats in the middle cars, just in case? Sounds like that's what the Chinese must be doing.

Have you seen any of the prices for the HSR decline as a way to get people riding again?

Susie: As you must have figured out by now, you can't book train tickets months in advance. IME, the people at the ticket window are pretty good at selling the best remaining seats first (e.g. D/F followed by A/B/C). I can't imagine the prices will ever fall (remember, 13% annual minimum wage increase during each of the next 5 years).

That would be interesting to see if they discounted the front and rear
cabins 50% off, if that would fill them up.

I'd bet yes.

I was under the impression that the cars that fell off the bridge were in the middle of the train.

Well, back in the hairy 1980's-1990's on the Cambodian trains, they put 2 cars in front of the engine as mine sweepers and Khmer Rouge ambush magnets. Passengers could ride for free in those two cars (and did!). :eek:

D301 derails cars 1-4
D3115 derails cars 13-16


http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8.../d301crash.jpg

When the Chinese see the train driver with a pair of binoculars and
a walkie talkie, they would tend to want the middle cars.

news cycle over
 

The media in BJ , which is mostly self-censored type editors, has had little about the incident the last few days, sun-mon-tues china daily type papers.

the past weekend & current 'print' news now seems to be the typhoon storm & the stock market. Thus the HSR incident has run its news cycle...

I love how you find this info, must be your networks in the US. :p

Coming Soon!
2011-08-11 07:59:31 China Daily
According to the Ministry of Railways, during the initial stages, trains with a top design speed of 350 kilometers per hour will be lowered to 300 km/h, and the trains designed to run up to 250 km/h will operate at 200 km/h.

The rails whose speed was previously raised to 200 km/h will be scaled down to 160 km/h. Ticket prices will also be reduced

Should do wonders for the railway ministry's finances. To require govt bailout is glorious?

Govt has always been subsidizing rail service, way before HSR came along. It will just subsidize it some more, at least for a good long while. Right now I think their customer service priority is restoring confidence in the HSR part of the system and increasing ridership of same. Even before the accident, the ticket prices were just too high for most Chinese after they looked at the value-time-convenience tradeoffs. Chinese gov't is committed and has no choice but to fix the system and figure out how to move forward with HSR, as there's no turning back and dismantling the whole thing.

I find the rail too slow to begin with... and now they want to make it slower. Hurry up and get richer chinese people.

• High-speed trains running on lines between Beijing and Tianjin, and between Shanghai and Hangzhou, will run at 300 km per hour instead of 350 km per hour

• Lines that run at 250 km per hour will be cut back to 200 km per hour, including high-speed rails between Hefei and Nanjing, Hefei and Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and Taiyuan and other lines.

• CRH (China Railway High-speed) trains that operate at 200 km per hour will be reduced to 160 km per hour

Ticket prices will be reduced by 5 percent on the affected lines,


That's really going to fill them up:D:td: