Welcome to Trip Bitten my name is Miguel and I've been living in china for 12 years and since
moving to china in 2010 one thing has stood out above everything else and that's China's massive
high-speed rail system. In the last 15 years, China has built the largest high-speed rail system
and now has the best trains in the world In this video, I will talk about China's
high-speed trains and how I have witnessed this amazing infrastructure project develop.
When I moved to China, it would have been easy to point to Japan and claim that they had the
best and most advanced trains in the world, but today in 2022, China is the undisputed champ.
I'm from the United States and although America has a developed freight rail its passenger lines
are almost non-existent. So when I moved to China, I was surprised by the high-speed trains here.
I was able to get around the area I was living in, which was Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, and I
was able to do this by train which was really new to me. The tickets were fairly cheap and
each year new lines opened allowing me to travel farther and farther into China's vast countryside.
In fact China's first high-speed rail line was the Beijing-Tianjin inner city rail,
which opened in august 2008. Two years later when I arrived in China, the Shanghai area
was already being developed and I was amazed by the project. By 2021 China had built the
world's longest high-speed rail network with a total length of 40,000 kilometers,
but they aren't slowing down. The government plans on building 70,000 kilometers of tracks by 2035.
That is insane! But having the most rail lines doesn't mean that the trains and services are the best.
If we look at the us, we have over 225,000 kilometers of rail lines, but almost no passenger lines.
So, what makes Chinese high-speed trains the best in the world? Well there are five things
that come to my mind when I think about China's high-speed trains and what makes them so good.
So let's go ahead and talk about those five things starting with number five, which is reliability.
Reliability is an important part of any transportation system and China's high-speed
trains are almost never delayed. If you've traveled a lot in china, like I have, then you know that
flying here in China can be a headache because it's almost always delayed. The reason for flights
always being delayed is because of China's strict airspace rules. Luckily, the trains don't need to
worry about airspace or any other rules because they are on a track. I can't think of any time I
experienced major delays while traveling by train in China. I prefer traveling by train here in China
because they are so reliable. They aren't only reliable, often saving more time when traveling,
but they're also cheaper than flying, which brings us to our next point affordability.
Price is always a factor when traveling and when traveling by train in China, it's often cheaper than
buying a flight. Obviously, there are a lot of factors that determine the price,
but I have found that traveling by train is often cheaper. But how does that impact
service? Oftentimes, when the price is low the service is also low, but I've found that
in China on the high-speed trains, service isn't sacrificed even with the cheap prices.
I find the service to be comparable to airlines. Attendants will bring drinks and food buy on carts
for you to buy and you can even order fast food to your seat, which is pretty amazing.
Hey guys, so it's almost dinner time and we wanted something different, if you've been in China
you've probably had the train food and it's usually just like gaifen (盖饭), which is like rice and
beef or rice and chicken or something. Yeah, so we decided... Not so good. No, it's not so good.
So, we decided to go for something else and we decided to order delivery, to get the food delivered.
Thank you! haha We just ordered McDonald's. It's a huge bag, I don't even know what we ordered...
The trains are also kept very clean with the bathrooms being cleaned about every half hour
or so and the floor is being mopped regularly. This is honestly one of the best parts of traveling by
high-speed train in China the services are good. The next point is destinations!
Here in China, there are hundreds and hundreds of stations that are linked via high-speed rail. So you can really
get anywhere you need to be via the high-speed rails. According to my research, there are over
5,500 train stations in China at present. About 500 stations operate G-trains, which is a high-speed train
and about 600 stations operate high-speed D-trains. Most of these train stations are well
equipped with facilities and can be easily reached throughout the city. Many of them even linked to
the downtown area. It is true most of the newly built train stations are amazing and remind me of
airports. They are equipped with restaurants bars bathrooms and lounges, making your train journey
easy and comfortable, because there are over 1 100 high-speed train stations you can easily get to
almost every major city in China, which is another reason I often take the trains here in China.
This brings us to our last point, which is availability! On top of being linked to almost every major city
the high-speed trains run almost hourly the availability is often times better than airlines.
Looking at my app, I can see 24 trains leaving from Shanghai to Beijing on any given day.
This means trains are leaving about every half hour, which means there is a ton of availability.
The Shanghai to Beijing route is popular, but other routes also have good availability,
with 5 to 15 trains leaving every day. Shanghai to Chengdu has 9 routes and the list goes on and on.
As you can see, these five reasons make Chinese high-speed trains the best in the world
and I'm not the only one that thinks this way. You can search for other videos or articles
about China's high-speed rails and find countless people talking about how great these trains are
compared to other countries. You can also see that Chinese people love the trains, because
ridership went from around 127 million rides in 2008 to over 2.2 billion rides in 2019.
What do you think of china's high-speed rails? How do they compare to your country?
Leave a comment below to let me know what you think and also if you want to see more train trips
check out this video over here! Click on this one and I will see you over there in the next video! Bye-bye!