Okay, HSR in Japan and Taiwan vs the PRC: There’s a huge reason why trains in the former two seem “more efficient”. If you look at their maps, their high speed rails are essentially one single corridor with very few crossover. This is partly because their land area itself is a more linear shape with more space in one dimension than the other. Meanwhile, mainland China’s territory is a lot more, square, and their rail system is arranged in essentially a web or grid, with many, many intersections and crossovers. Those intersection points can introduce delays as they must be coordinated with safety margins between trains to prevent collisions, which in a busy timetable could amplify a small delay to one affecting a large part of the network. Surprise surprise, it’s a lot easier to build a train network in one dimension than in both dimensions, and the systems operate so differently that it’s almost inaccurate to directly compare them.
I’m assuming the “efficiency” of a train system here either means purely how on time it is because that’s usually the benchmark everyone fixates on even though it’s only a small part of a good train system.
However, a larger network can, you know, also carry way more people much further, because it’s larger, and has more trains, and covers many more cities and towns. So in that regard, there is no contest. And even for “efficiency”, aka punctuality, a more apt comparison would be mainland China vs the EU, which also uses that web topology for railroads, which, yeah there’s also no contest.
Maps to show what I means, keep in mind that the maps for China and the EU also show conventional non high speed lines while the ones for Taiwan and Japan only show high speed lines.
Okay, HSR in Japan and Taiwan vs the PRC: There’s a huge reason why trains in the former two seem “more efficient”. If you look at their maps, their high speed rails are essentially one single corridor with very few crossover. This is partly because their land area itself is a more linear shape with more space in one dimension than the other. Meanwhile, mainland China’s territory is a lot more, square, and their rail system is arranged in essentially a web or grid, with many, many intersections and crossovers. Those intersection points can introduce delays as they must be coordinated with safety margins between trains to prevent collisions, which in a busy timetable could amplify a small delay to one affecting a large part of the network. Surprise surprise, it’s a lot easier to build a train network in one dimension than in both dimensions, and the systems operate so differently that it’s almost inaccurate to directly compare them.
I’m assuming the “efficiency” of a train system here either means purely how on time it is because that’s usually the benchmark everyone fixates on even though it’s only a small part of a good train system.
However, a larger network can, you know, also carry way more people much further, because it’s larger, and has more trains, and covers many more cities and towns. So in that regard, there is no contest. And even for “efficiency”, aka punctuality, a more apt comparison would be mainland China vs the EU, which also uses that web topology for railroads, which, yeah there’s also no contest.
Maps to show what I means, keep in mind that the maps for China and the EU also show conventional non high speed lines while the ones for Taiwan and Japan only show high speed lines.