China Rail: Travelling during the National Holiday Week part two

Join me as I use the China High Speed Rail System to travel from Ningbo to Shanghai Songjiang during the very busy National Holiday Week.

Ningbo;
Ningbo is a sub-provincial city in northeast Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It comprises six urban districts, two satellite county-level cities, and two rural counties, including several islands in Hangzhou Bay and the East China Sea. Ningbo is the southern economic center of the Yangtze Delta megalopolis. The port of Ningbo–Zhoushan, spread across several locations, is the world's busiest port by cargo tonnage and world's third-busiest container port since 2010.

Ningbo is the core city and center of the Ningbo Metropolitan Area. To the north, Hangzhou Bay separates Ningbo from Shanghai; to the east lies Zhoushan in the East China Sea; on the west and south, Ningbo borders Shaoxing and Taizhou respectively. As of the 2020 Chinese national census the entire administrated area of Ningbo City had a population of 9.4 million (9,404,283).

Ningbo is one of the 15 sub-provincial cities in China, and is one of the five separate state-planning cities in China (the other four being Dalian, Qingdao, Xiamen, and Shenzhen), with the municipality possessing a separate state-planning status in many economic departments, rather than being governed by Zhejiang Province. Therefore, Ningbo has provincial-level autonomy in making economic and financial policies.

In 2022, the GDP of Ningbo was CNY 1570,43 billion (US$233.479 billion), and it was ranked 12th among 293 cities in China. Moreover, Ningbo is among the wealthiest cities in China; it ranked 8th in terms of average yearly disposable income in the year of 2020. As of 2020, Ningbo has global headquarters and registered offices of over 100 listed companies, and many regional business headquarters. In 2021, Ningbo featured the seventh most listed companies of all cities in China. Furthermore, Ningbo was among the top 10 Chinese cities in the Urban Business Environment Report released by the Chinese state media China Central Television (CCTV) in 2019.

As a city with rich culture and a long history dating back to the Jingtou Mountain Culture in 6300 BC and the Hemudu culture in 4800 BC, Ningbo was awarded "City of Culture in East Asia" by the governments of China, Japan, and Korea in 2016. From 1842, Ningbo was one of the first five treaty ports opened up to the West. Ningbo is one of the top 200 cities in the world by scientific research as tracked by the Nature Index.

High Speed Rail;
The high-speed rail (HSR) network in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the world's longest and most extensively used – with a total length of 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi) by the end of 2023. The HSR network encompasses newly built rail lines with a design speed of 200–380 km/h (120–240 mph). China's HSR accounts for two-thirds of the world's total high-speed railway networks. Almost all HSR trains, track and service are owned and operated by the China Railway Corporation under the brand China Railway High-speed (CRH).

High-speed rail developed rapidly in China since the mid-2000s. CRH was introduced in April 2007 and the Beijing-Tianjin intercity rail, which opened in August 2008, was the first passenger dedicated HSR line. Currently, the HSR extends to all provincial-level administrative divisions and Hong Kong SAR with the exception of Macau SAR.

Notable HSR lines in China include the Beijing–Kunming high-speed railway which at 2,760 km (1,710 mi) is the world's longest HSR line in operation, and the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway with the world's fastest operating conventional train services. The Shanghai Maglev is the world's first high-speed commercial magnetic levitation ("maglev") line that reach a top speed of 430 km/h (267 mph).

The economic logic of high-speed rail in China has been a topic of much discussion. A 2019 study produced by TransFORM, a knowledge platform developed by the World Bank and China’s Ministry of Transport, estimated the annual rate of economic return of China's high-speed rail network in 2015, to be at 8 percent, which is well above the opportunity cost of capital in China for major long term infrastructure investments. The study also noted a range of benefits which included shortened travel times, improved safety and better facilitation of tourism, labor and mobility, as well as reducing highway congestion, accidents and greenhouse emissions as some automobile travellers switch from car use to rail. A 2020 study by Paulson Institute has estimated the net benefit of the high-speed rail system to be approximately $378 billion, with an annual return on investment of 6.5%.

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