This paper investigates the saved travel time (STT) of two short haul city-cluster high-speed rails (C-HSR) in China, in the competition with road transport and long distance high-speed rail (HSR) trunk lines. We analyze its correlation with passengers’ travel distance distribution based on the actual passenger flow. The results suggest that C-HSR has competitive advantage for haul distances between 31 km and 160 km. It depends on both the station to station distance and the out of vehicle time, whereas the latter has greater influence on shorter corridors. The reasonable ratio of the out of vehicle time to the in vehicle time is between 0.4 and 1.4. The distribution of C-HSR passengers’ travel distance is in line with STT. The distances of most C-HSR trips are within the range of C-HSR’s competitive advantage. The policy implications of the conclusions are operation schemes of C-HSR and even long distance HSR lines and the suggestion for C-HSR stations’ site selection.