Generally speaking, taking an intercity train that connects two cities is similar to taking a regular high-speed train, requiring you to purchase a ticket in advance and board the train at a specified time.
Moving into 2024, things are starting to change. In Guangdong, more and more intercity trains have started "subway" operation.
For example, from March 1, the Foshan-Zhaozhou and Dongguan-Huizhou intercity railways will use a new version of the train schedule. The service time has been extended, the average travel interval has been reduced to 25 minutes, and the operation mode of "subway" has been adopted.
In recent years, some cities in China have signed agreements on the development of the same city, and many cities have become large and small metropolitan areas, and many have received approval and support from the national level.
Is Guangdong's attempt suitable for promotion in major metropolitan areas across the country?
A number of intercity trains began to be "subway-oriented".
Before the recent "subway" of a number of intercity railways, Guangdong has started several rounds of exploration.
As early as March 2021, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area intercity railway project was included in the national "14th Five-Year Plan". According to the plan, in the next five years, more than 1,300 kilometers of "metro-like" intercity rail will be laid in the Greater Bay Area, making it as easy to travel to any city in the Bay Area as it is to commute in the city.
Prior to the introduction of the above plan, Guangdong had actually begun to try. In the province, the intercity railway connecting Guangzhou and Shenzhen is extremely busy. In January 2019, the railway began to reform the boarding mode, allowing passengers to use the "boarding code" to swipe the code to take the train, similar to the subway ticket purchase form.
In November 2020, the Guangzhou (Zhou) Qing (Yuan) Intercity Railway and the Guangzhou East Ring Intercity Railway were put into operation, and the general cross-city railway is different in that these two lines can directly use the bus card or subway code to enter the station, and also set up an exclusive route map, and the design style of the platform is consistent with the style of the subway station.
Generally speaking, both trunk high-speed rail and ordinary intercity railways are operated by the China Railway Group, while the metro system is operated by the local rail transit group. The main reason why Guangdong has been able to "subway" the intercity railway is the transformation of its main operating rights.
As early as January 2022, at the cooperation and exchange meeting held by the Guangzhou State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and Baiyun District, Ding Jianlong, chairman of Guangzhou Metro Group, mentioned that "the management of the Pearl River Delta Intercity has recently been transferred to Guangzhou Metro. ”
In addition to Guangdong, other urban agglomerations have recently been experimenting with this mode of operation.
At the end of December 2023, the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Zhuzhou-Zhuzhou-Zhuhai-Tan Intercity in Hunan will also be integrated with the Changsha Metro, in addition to purchasing urban railway tickets on the 12306 APP, you can also scan the QR code directly through the Changsha Metro APP to get on the train.
Behind this change, the conversion of operating rights is also a "highlight", and the subsidiaries of China Railway Group have also gradually withdrawn from the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Tan intercity operation.
According to the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, from November 21 to 24, 2023, Hunan Intercity Railway*** carried out a series of industrial and commercial information changes. After the completion of the change, Hunan Intercity Railway will be jointly held by the former Hunan Rail Transit Holding Group (70%) and China Railway Guangzhou Bureau Group (30%), and will be transformed into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hunan Rail Transit Holding Group.
The Hunan Intercity Railway is the main operating company of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Tan Intercity.
In the view of Yang Xinmiao, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Research of Tsinghua University, the important task of the China Railway Group is to do a good job in passenger and freight transportation between large cities across the country, and the railway transportation around large cities is handed over to local railway transportation enterprises to undertake more, which can adapt to diversified transportation needs and is easy to improve service levels. "The emergence of a new level of rail transport market and services should be supported and encouraged," he said. ”
The most efficient option?
There are many classifications of railways in China, which are mainly divided into trunk railways and intercity railways. For example, the "eight vertical and eight horizontal" planned by the state is a typical trunk railway.
Intercity rail transit generally refers to the passenger rail transit system built between major central cities in densely populated areas or within the commuting circle of rail transit in a large city.
Intercity rail transit belongs to regional rail transit in terms of positioning, and in the rail transit system, it is a traffic level between national trunk transportation and urban (urban) internal transportation. Therefore, its full name is "regional intercity rail transit".
According to the service function positioning, the intercity railway mainly serves the urban agglomeration, focusing on the long-distance business, family visit, tourism and other passenger flows between cities within the urban agglomeration, and the service range is generally 100 kilometers to 300 kilometers; The subway is mainly used to serve the short-distance commuting problem in the central urban area of the city, to solve the traffic problem within the city, and the service range is within 50 kilometers, generally about 30 kilometers.
Looking at the world, many famous metropolitan areas are actually bonded by 'subway-like' intercity trains. Because the cost of land, housing prices, and rent in the core area of the metropolitan area are often high, many commuters need to commute by train quickly. Niu Fengrui, a researcher in regional economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, analyzed.
Taking the Tokyo metropolitan area as an example, the subway is basically used for those with a radius of about 20 kilometers in the inner space of the city. Within a radius of 50 kilometers, regional railways such as private railways and JR (Japan National Railways) are mainly used to meet the commuting needs of peripheral groups and central urban areas. For larger economic circles, such as travel that takes 2 to 3 hours, the Shinkansen (high-speed railway) is generally used.
In the Tokyo metropolitan area, the total length of regional lines reaches 2,368 kilometers, accounting for about 76% of the total mileage of rail transit in the metropolitan area, and the station distance is 5 15 kilometers, mainly serving the node cities in the metropolitan area, the commuter flow from the new town to the center of Tokyo, forming the main axis of intercity connection and promoting the construction of a world-class urban agglomeration in Tokyo.
In contrast, in China, before the emergence of "subway-oriented" intercity railways, some cross-city subway projects in the metropolitan area have already appeared.
Also in Guangdong, as an example, as early as November 2010, the Guangzhou-Foshan Metro, which links Guangzhou and Foshan, began to operate the first phase of the first section, which is the first metro line in Chinese mainland to cross prefecture-level administrative regions. By 2013, Shanghai Metro Line 11 had entered Huaqiao Town, Kunshan, Jiangsu.
And with the passage of time, more and more cross-city subways are gradually opened. For example, in April 2022, the subway connection between Hangzhou and the core urban area of Shaoxing was realized; In June 2023, the Shanghai Metro connected to the main urban area of Suzhou.
However, if you take the subway, you need to take more than 50 subway stops from the main city of Shanghai to the main city of Suzhou. For example, the journey from Weiting Station in the core area of Suzhou Industrial Park to People's Square Subway Station in downtown Shanghai takes more than two and a half hours. At present, there is no intercity railway from Suzhou to Shanghai, but the high-speed rail connecting the two cities takes about half an hour; Similarly, if you take the bullet train, it takes about 18 minutes from Guangzhou to Foshan, but if you take the subway, the same distance takes more than an hour.
According to Yang Hao, a professor at the School of Transportation of Beijing Jiaotong University, the current attempt to operate the subway of intercity railways in Guangdong and other places is correct, and the essence is to implement public transportation operations in intercity railways, urban railways and urban rail transit, so as to further improve operational efficiency and facilitate the majority of passengers.
Breakthroughs are still needed.
With the continuous advancement of the "subway" of intercity railways in Guangdong, this topic has become a hot topic in the national transportation system, and the "subway" of some new intercity railways is also constantly being discussed.
Although the intercity railway and the subway belong to the same rail transit, the signaling system, ticketing and ticketing, billing system, vehicle system, etc. are different, and the unification of these systems is a huge and complex project. Yang Xinmiao said. In his view, the transformation of intercity railways into a subway-based operation mode needs to consider whether the operating income of fares can support the operating costs of high-frequency operation.
Recently, the local ** in Henan Province has launched a heated discussion on the "subway" of the Zhengkai Intercity Railway.
Zhengkai Intercity Railway Figure Visual China.
The total length of the Zhengkai intercity railway is 4996 kilometers, starting from Zhengzhou East Railway Station Intercity Field in the west, passing through the south side of Jinshui East Road and Zhengkai Avenue to the east through the Zhengkai City Area, and ending at Kaifeng Songcheng Road Station. In the middle, Jialu River, Green Expo Park, and Yunliang River stations are set up, and stations such as the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Baisha and Liuji are reserved, with a target speed of 200 kilometers per hour, which was put into operation in December 2014.
However, relevant data show that in 2019 before the outbreak of the epidemic, the intercity passenger flow of Zhengkai accounted for only 10 of the total passenger flow of the Zhengzhou and Kaifeng corridors, and the point-to-point passenger flow between the two cities accounted for 98 of the total passenger flow, and the attendance rate of commuter passenger flow was seriously insufficient.
The average daily passenger flow of the Beijing-Tianjin intercity exceeds 70,000 people, 128 pairs of trains run daily, the shortest departure interval is 3 minutes, there are Beijing-Tianjin intercity China Railway JETCO card, the same city discount card and other preferential ticketing services, as well as 30-day regular tickets, 20 times counting tickets, 10 times counting tickets and other new ticket products. Many of the passengers who bought these multiple tickets in Beijing and Tianjin were commuters who crossed the city commute.
For example, in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta regions, the urbanization rate is relatively high, the boundaries between cities have been gradually blurred, and the commuter passenger flow between small and medium-sized towns along the line is larger, which is an important condition for the 'subway' of intercity railways. Niu Fengrui analyzed, "Especially in the Pearl River Delta region, due to the close connection between the regions, the urban boundaries are blurred to a certain extent, and the flow of passengers is also more frequent." ”
In his view, developed regional rail transit is an important condition for the efficient operation of the metropolitan area, and the promotion of intercity railway "metroization" in these areas will play a role in alleviating the problems of insufficient space and traffic congestion in the core area of the city.
At present, the urbanization rate of major cities in the Pearl River Delta region is the most prominent, and in 2022, the urbanization rate of Shenzhen, Foshan, and Dongguan has exceeded 90%, respectively. 25%, and Guangzhou's urbanization rate has also reached 8648%。
Guangdong's exploration can provide lessons for regions in similar situations, such as the Yangtze River Delta region, but there are still many 'barriers' that need to be broken in the process of promotion, such as the ownership of the operation rights of intercity railways. Some industry insiders admitted to China News Weekly.
In addition, security and industry standards also need to be improved as soon as possible.
Yang Xinmiao voiced her observations. He said, "During my research trip last year, I found that there were many passengers standing on the intercity train from Guangzhou to Shenzhen on holidays, which was slightly crowded. Unlike subways, intercity trains are actually at risk of overloading if there are too many passengers on the ticket. ”
Generally speaking, the fastest running speed of the urban subway is generally about 160 kilometers per hour, but the speed of some intercity trains can exceed 300 kilometers per hour, such as the Shanghai-Nanjing intercity railway, the design speed is 350 kilometers per hour. Yang Xinmiao said frankly that under such circumstances, how to ensure the safety of "subway" intercity trains cannot be ignored.
In his view, it is also necessary to encourage the leading regions to establish industry organizations, exchange service experience, and form a more appropriate normative system as soon as possible.
*: China News Weekly Guangzhou** New Flower City Editor: Li Huiting.