Smart Rail Project in China Ends in Closure, Debt, and Silence 3 Years After Opening

A worker stands as a train arrives at Taiyuan South Railway Station in Taiyuan, capital of China’s Shanxi Province, on July 22, 2025. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty ImagesA smart rail line once touted by Chinese state media as a breakthrough in urban transport has quietly ceased operations in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, leaving behind empty platforms, dismantled barriers, and growing questions about the political logic behind costly infrastructure projects with little public demand.The Xixian New Area Smart Rail Demonstration Line 1—branded by officials as the “first smart rail in northwest China”—was built at a cost of roughly 700 million yuan (U.S.$98 million). After years of operating losses, the line stopped running in mid-January, just three years after it officially opened.