by Zoë Pollock
The above chart documents airfares between Beijing and Shanghai before and after the arrival of a high-speed train between the two cities. James Fallows qualifies the dramatic drop in prices:
The truncated vertical scale of the chart — it shows only the span from $250 to $425, not from zero to $425 — of course makes it somewhat misleading. The fare fell suddenly by about one third, not by the 90% or so that the chart would suggest. Still, the suddenness of the change is the interesting part.
The Dish 