LAST Saturday my sister came to Shanghai from Beijing for a business trip, traveling on the newly christened gaotie, the latest bullet train.

Like dongche, another kind of bullet train, this much-hyped gaotie is as obfuscating in its Chinese original as it is pretentious.

My sister was lucky: The train arrived on time, without any glitches.

The gaotie was launched with much fanfare on July 1 but from July 10 to July 13 it had three breakdowns resulting in chaos, extensive delays and pain for passengers.

One particularly ill-starred passenger was confined in a suffocating car without water, power and air-conditioning for 140 minutes on the G159 on July 10 - and was stranded again when he made a return trip two days later on the G2.

The Beijing-Shanghai gaotie has been frequently compared with airlines - even gaojie (gaotie attendants) are attired in flight attendant style.

But in making much ado about its high technology, speed and glamor, the gaotie has clearly lost touch with the customers it is supposed to serve, notably migrant workers.

In recent years the railway authority has suddenly evinced an all-consuming interest in speed, an enthusiasm that is typical of people who have yet to achieve their intellectual or emotional maturity.

At the beginning, the move to speed up transportation proceeded from a politically correct initiative on the part of the "Iron No. 1" (a nickname for the semi-military state monopoly of China railways) to become more sensitive to the needs of the travelers.

When the Ministry of Railways seems to be addicted to speeding up and appears to be interested in little else, suspicion naturally arises.

Money-making excuses

Are the frequent speed ups just excuses for more steep price hikes?

On June 27 last year, the Beijing-Shanghai line ended the time honored lupi che, the traditional service with familiar green compartments, replacing it with an upgraded, air-conditioned version. The upgrade almost doubled the minimum fare from 88 yuan (US$13.50) to 158 yuan.

Then the media was abuzz with dongche, which cut travel time by three hours, to 10 hours.

That's almost the minimum time required for a comfortable overnight trip.

This July 1, when the gaotie went into operation, the travel time was further reduced to about five hours. Incidentally, the price soared to fares ranging from 410 yuan to 1,750 yuan.

By drastically increasing the fare, the rail authority has successfully turned the once cheap and accessible train into a money-sucking machine.

Anyone familiar with the Chinese situation should not fail to see that the majority of the Chinese people are price-sensitive and it's usually more important to save money than time.

And it is obvious that an overnight trip in a sleeper is much more comfortable than five hours sitting up.

The ministry's way of overcoming this inherent resistance to higher fares is to stop providing the cheap and more convenient choices.

In order to create patronage for the gaotie, the rail ministry has stopped all but one overnight dongche train service between Beijing and Shanghai.

The only remaining overnight train has become so sought-after that one reporter recently counted no less than 11 passengers standing in a space of less than one square meter - conditions suggestive of refugee camps. My sister said to get a ticket on that train one needs to start at least 10 days in advance.

The overcrowded old train is a stark contrasts to the almost-empty first class and business class on the new Beijing and Shanghai gaotie.

Targeting wrong people

Clearly the ministry has a grave misperception about its role. It is a state-owned monopoly whose primary function is to serve, rather than profiteer.

Rail used to be the transport of choice for ordinary people, and there is no reasons why it should stop being so.

It should be targeting very different segments of the population from the airlines.

What the ministry is doing provides more options to the rich people already spoiled for choices, but at the same time may eliminate poor people's only way home.

But was the railway ministry particularly zealous in this respect? By no means.

The gaotie approach is inevitable when human beings are regarded primarily as consumers in a society that idolizes the market.

This becomes easier to understand when placed in a more general context.

When you stroll down prime real estate along Huaihai Road or Nanjing Road, do you find any inviting places to enter if you are not among the top 1 percent of China's earners?

Like gaotie's first class, those shining brand shops are almost deserted, but bewilderingly they continue to conquer.

Similarly, in the national obsession to clean up and tidy up cities, the original residents have been effectively priced out of the prime, downtown area.

Environmental costs

The key to successful reform in the medical, educational and cultural sectors is to identify and exploit to the fullest those people with high net worth.

How expensive is the Chinese gaotie? According to one calculation, if two people make a return trip between Hangzhou and Shanghai, the journey costs almost as much as a two-person car trip.

Traveling by rail used to be one of the most ecologically sound means of transport, but that is true only when trains travel at reasonable speed.

According to one piece of research, when traveling at 300 to 400 km/hour powered by coal-generated electricity, gaotie is more environmentally destructive even than airliners, which mostly travel at a high altitude with less resistance.

A seldom-advertised fact is that the cost efficiency of rail falls sharply as speed increases. In other words, compared with slower trains, gaotie is moving fewer passengers by consuming more fuel.

Ironically, that provides the best justification for the prohibitive gaotie fare.

Then there's the question of financing the gaotie project.

At a total cost of 221 billion yuan, the project has been financed by, among other things, the 4 trillion yuan stimulus package, taxpayers, and state assets.

Which means the people have already paid for it.

The gaotie operators can do a number of things to win back the trust of the people, and the first is to slow down. That might help reconnect them to the people.

According to Xinhua, the ministry is considering increasing the popular overnight dongche services. If true, that would be a good start.