Korea recently decided to terminate its AREX (Airport Railroad Express) train service from Seoul to Incheon Airport. This service began in 2014 as one of the projects for getting the country ready to host the 2018 Winter Olympics. International passengers could leave the Incheon Airport (which serves Seoul) and take a KTX (Korea Train Express) train about 100 miles direct to PyeongChang, where the Olympics took place, on a new high-speed rail line built to that region.
Korea’s KTX trains were based on French TGV designs; the first ones were built in France while later ones were built in Korea under license to and using many parts imported from France. Wikipedia photo by Subway06.
After the Olympics ended, however, ridership on the airport line dwindled. The 44 trains a day (22 in each direction) carried an average of 78 people. Since the trains had well over 300 seats, they operated just 23 percent full, and were most heavily used on weekends while weekday trains were nearly empty. If all of the train passengers were air travelers, they accounted for less than 1.5 percent of people arriving or departing from Incheon Airport. However, it is likely that many of the rail passengers were airport employees, not air travelers, which means the train probably carried around 1 percent of airline passengers.
The reason for the empty trains was simple: buses were both less expensive and faster. While Korea’s KTX high-speed trains have top speeds of around 190 mph, the airport line was not built for such high speeds and the top speed was no more than 105 and the average speed was much less. With dedicated lanes to the airport, buses didn’t have to deal with congestion and could reach the airport almost 15 minutes faster than the train. One-way bus fares were also the equivalent of about $2 less than the rail fare.
Korail, the state-owned company that operates KTX and other Korean trains, earned about $100 million in profits in 2016 but lost nearly four times that much in 2017, partly due to an 8 percent decline in ridership. The nation spent $266 million building the line to the airport, money that will never be recovered.
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Incheon is still served by a commuter rail train that makes stops at the airport. However, it is much slower than airport buses. Wikipedia photo by Subway06.
Korail has the same problem that Japanese National Railway experienced after building its first high-speed rail line to serve the 1964 Olympics: local politicians demanded that the state-owned railway build more lines to other parts of the country. By 1987, JNR — which had been profitable before building high-speed rail — was roughly $300 billion in debt (in today’s dollars).
In both Japan and Korea, the politicians claimed that the high-speed lines contributed to local economic development. But they didn’t lead the nations as a whole to grow faster, which means the local development resulting from the high-speed rail was a zero-sum game, that is, faster growth in cities served by the trains was offset by slower growth in some other part of the country.
Korea’s experience provides one more object lesson for those who wish for train service to their local airport. While the middle-class planners who propose such lines imagine they would ride them to the airports, the vast majority of people will not, and the lines become white elephants.
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The idea of High speed trains is that they’re supposed to operate as an economically efficient and environmentally friendlier form of transportation than the planes. Sooooo, why build a train whose purpose is to get you to the airport. Because South Korea’s airport mainly serves international destination across the Pacific, unlike the US where transit flights less than 500 miles are ubiquitous. The failure here is that trains don’t serve the supposed “Sweet Spot”.
– Cars are more convenient especially with your own luggage aboard.
– Buses are cheaper
Yet costs don’t matter when it comes to roads :$
“Korea’s experience provides one more object lesson for those who wish for train service to their local airport. While the middle-class planners who propose such lines imagine they would ride them to the airports, the vast majority of people will not, and the lines become white elephants.”
An interesting could be made to the Heathrow Express. It works very well indeed.
The coach service runs to Reading, a major city on the GWR line.
There isn’t much to South Korea. IIRC the line between Busan and Seoul has 2/3 or 3/4th of South Koreans living on that corridor. The other line to the SW corner ( Maipo ? ) pretty much covers the rest.
You can see the SOuth Korean population density here
https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2013/04/09/bright-lights-big-city/
https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu//wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Map_of_the_Month_Apr_2013_final.jpg
*Pretending to be HIghwayman*
Roads, SOCIALISM, ECONOMICS, PROFIT, BLARGHELW
(????)?????
‘Local politicians demanded that the state-owned ROADWAY build more LINES IN other parts of the country’. Classic problem. The US just does highways instead of rail lines.
KTX was 100 miles long, from airport to downtown. HSR median station spacing should be 250 miles, with a range of 100-500 apart. So the spacing was marginal from the get-go. That the bus was FASTER suggests that KTX was a boondoggle. This does not imply that all HSR is a boondoggle.
mattmiller,
KTX covers the entire country, but the line from downtown Seoul to Incheon Airport is about 30 miles, not 100. You are right that this does not prove that all HSR is a boondoggle, but for other reasons all HSR in developed countries is a boondoggle.
Then by that logic motorways are also boondoggles :$