THE STATUS OF CHINESE RAILWAY IN THE INTER-CITY PASSENGER TRANSPORT AND ITS DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

摘要

This paper first analyzes the development trend about China's urbanization, the city distribution features and the inter-city passenger transport. With the acceleration of China's urbanization, the travel demand of inter-city passenger transport is boosted greatly. Then it explores the status of railway in the inter-city passenger transport market by thorough comparison with other transportation modes from different angles. Railway plays and will still play an essential role in the inter-city passenger transport market, especially in the middle and long distance passenger transport market, namely, between two city zones. Following this, it puts up some development strategies for railway according to the transportation distance and the development situation of the west, the middle and the east. It points out that fast and high-speed transport is ideal strategy to handle the traffic. "Public transport" mode is more suitable to some developed city zones for railway to compete with other transportation modes.