Recently, there is a very interesting news, about a city in Gansu Province in order to engage in rail transit, regardless of its annual income of a few catties and taels, forcibly spent billions of yuan, and built a nondescript underground railway.
Since 2018, Tianshui City has planned to invest and finance 9 billion yuan to build the first and second phases of the "tram" project through the PPP model. On May 1, 2020, the first phase of the project was completed and officially put into operation, and since the operation of the first phase of the project, the annual passenger capacity is only 800,000, the income is 1.6 million yuan, and the annual operating cost is about 40 million yuan.
Then the second phase of the project was not there, and it was directly unfinished.
Tianshui City has jurisdiction over 2 districts and 5 counties, with a total area of 1430,000 square kilometers. As of the end of 2022, the permanent population of Tianshui City was 295440,000 people, and the GDP of Tianshui City in 2023 will be 86 billion yuan.
There must be more than one second- and third-tier city like Tianshui on the rail transit, and we have Jinhua, Taizhou and Wenzhou in Jinhua, Taizhou and Wenzhou in the area of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Around Hangzhou in northern Zhejiang, the light rail of the subway line connecting Huzhou, Shaoxing and Jiaxing is also constantly improving.
Less than five metro cities across the country are profitable, and most of them require massive subsidies.
Why do these cities in China have to get on the subway? This has to be said that the involution problem between major cities.
Many cities have made a mistake and regarded the subway as a ticket to a modern city, the most important business card to attract industry and population.
The second is to alleviate the pressure on urban road traffic, which is rising with the popularity of private cars.
The original intention of the city is also to replace the buses and green trains of the past with more advanced and comfortable rail transportation.
At the same time, it can bring the districts and counties in the city closer together and further concentrate the population and resources.
The construction of rail transit should be a passive behavior.
That is, when the population is too concentrated and the traffic pressure is too high, the subway is used to upgrade the bus.
However, in the process of implementation, many cities do not have so much traffic pressure, and even become cities with a net outflow of population.
Some of them are superstitious about rail transit, thinking that by building a light rail, they can attract young people from all over the country to come and join them.
As a result, many light rail and subway stations are built in sparsely populated areas.
Their inner calculation is that in the future, tens of thousands of young people can be placed in these vacant spaces.
As a result, all kinds of plans for millions and tens of millions of cities have sprung up on paper.
After the final landing, the subway and light rail were built too far away, and there were not many young people from other places, and the locals were too lazy to try it, and the task of the subway became to transport seats every day.
Most of China's high-quality resources, such as higher education, high-quality industries, and developed transportation networks, are concentrated in coastal cities.
These cities themselves have good location advantages and are the trendsetters of the current marine economy.
In addition, the policy is tilted, and some important supporting facilities are placed in these cities.
The trend in the future must be the process of young people running to these big cities and the continuous decline of second- and third-tier cities.
In this process, second- and third-tier cities will continue to struggle, hoping to fight for a first-mover advantage and delay the decline process through light rail.
But in the face of declining populations, young people being pinched by big coastal cities, and the continued hollowing out of rural areas, this struggle is destined to be a mantis arm.
And the behavior of Tianshui City, which ignores the actual situation and blindly goes on the rails, is a suicidal struggle, and will even accelerate the decline of the city.
If you want the city to live well, you have to absorb the population, so that more and more people from other places can come and take root, and the local area will get better and better.
Therefore, in the final analysis, it has to be a matter of attracting investment and increasing employment.
Don't be superstitious about the subway, the subway is not omnipotent, and not everyone can afford to play the subway, and practical development is the last word!