Couriers eye high-speed rail

Domestic express delivery firms intend to try freight transport via the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed railway, scheduled to start full operation on December 26, in hopes of cutting delivery time through a more reliable method of transport.

A one-way trip from Beijing to Guangzhou takes eight hours via high-speed rail, compared with three hours via air.

Air transport is faster than rail or motor, but more easily influenced by uncertain factors such as bad weather, Yang Xinwei, vice president of Shanghai-based YTO Express, told the Global Times Monday.

YTO expects to use high-speed rail transport in the future, but only after the governments issue regulations for transporting freight this way.

Shenzhen-based SF Express, which views air as its main transport mode, also expressed a positive attitude toward high-speed rail transport's relative reliability when contacted by the Global Times Monday.

Early in October, SF dipped its toe into the water by transporting cargo in some of the high-speed trains which are tested empty every morning over short distances taking less than 40 minutes.

The company did not reveal the test results but hopes to carry out more in the future.

"Once the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed rail is fully operational, the domestic express delivery industry will see costs fall by at least half," said Wu Ruliang, head of the Logistics Association of Hubei Province, as quoted by the Wuhan Evening News over the weekend.

Wu added that toll stations along expressways increase the costs of motor transport while reducing its efficiency.

However, Yang expressed concern that a lack of freight regulations clouds the development of high-speed rail, making it hard for domestic express firms to tell whether high-speed railways will lower costs or not.

Currently, high-speed rail is mainly limited to delivering small-scale urgent parcels for same-day delivery, and can hard be applied more widely, given that high-speed railways are still used for passenger transport and not for freight, Xu Yong, chief advisor of China Express and Logistics Consulting, told the Global Times Monday.

"More than 70 percent of mail is delivered by motor vehicle and 25 percent by plane, leaving rail transport responsible for less than 5 percent," said Xu, adding that rail transport has great potential for development.

Xu claimed that the governments were unlikely to issue regulations for high-speed freight transport soon, but expected them to quickly add more conventional freight trains or accelerate the speed of current ones since there is more room for them on older tracks now that many passenger trains have switched to high-speed railways.

"I still prefer (motor transport), since most domestic delivery firms have not established mature logistics systems for linking directly with train stations," an industry insider surnamed Dou, who managed a delivery business in Beijing for some 10 years, told the Global Times Monday.