Balancing China's Seasonal Intercity Travel Demand: Alternatives for Freight Rail Expansion to Reduce Seasonal Passenger Rail Demand

Abstract

Since 2010, China's annual domestic holiday travel for the 20-day season surrounding Spring Festival (a.k.a. Chinese New Year) has exceeded 200 million trips (China Transportation and Communication Yearbook). The demand surges have overwhelmedintercity transportation systems, particularly passenger rail. This transportation problem has emerged due to spatial economic imbalance: workers have had to travel betweentheir homes in rural hinterlands to factory jobs on the industrial coast, which had grown into amigratory population of 261,390,000 by 2010 (National Bureau of Statistics of China). The objectives of this research were: * to examine spatial relationships among factories, raw materials, markets, workers, and rail connections; and, * to identify how development of China's freight-rail industry can or will influence the Spring Festival travel season. Spatial analysis using geographic information systems (GIS), statistical hypothesis testing, and economic analysis including location quotients were conducted to examine spatial relationships among markets, factories, raw materials, workers, and rail connections. Potential was explored for developing freight rail to support inland vertical industry and employment that might reduce worker migration and thus reduce the surges of the Spring Festival travel season. It was concluded that Research results indicated sixteen inland provinces stood to develop vertical industries and integration. The inland provinces offered resources to support developing six main value-added industries: food processing, fiber development into cloth and textiles, wood and paper products from timber, tobacco products, metals, and machinery. Inland industrialization can offer employment to current migratory workers, thus reducing domestic passenger travel and the volume surges of Spring Festival seasonal demand. As movement of finished goods from hinterlands to the coast replaces movement of workers to coastal factory jobs, freight demand will increase. Increasing freight volumes across the country will produce pressure on the current freight railway network, leading to a need to reverse recent disinvestment by investing in freight infrastructure.