A much shorter trip

The experts from the China Academy of Railway Sciences pointed out that the average speed of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway will be 250 km/h, with the maximum speed designed to reach 350 km/h. During the trial period, the distance between trains should be at least 16.7 km. A train is designed to carry 1,000-1,200 passengers. There will be 110-120 trains departing from Beijing and Shanghai each day, carrying over 220,000 passengers between the two cities. If there is no stop along the route, the trip will take only five hours, instead of the current 12 hours. The Railways Ministry predicted that the total investment in the project could be recouped within 15 years.

Railways Minister Liu Zhijun said the construction financing for the project would come from private capital inside China, low-interest loans from the World Bank and foreign governments and loans from foreign commercial banks. It is reported that the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway Co. Ltd. will be set up to handle the construction and operation of the project. Experts said that the high-speed railway is expected to be established within six to seven years, starting with the Shanghai-Nanjing and Beijing-Tianjin segments.

The construction of the Beijing-Tianjin passenger line, with a designed speed of 300 km/h, was begun in July 2005, and is expected to be completed before August 2008, when the Beijing Olympic Games begin.

During President Hu Jintao’s visit to Germany last November, China’s Railways Ministry signed a contract with Siemens to buy 60 high-speed trains that can travel up to 300 km/h for 669 million euros (6.35 billion yuan). The trains will be put into service on the Beijing-Tianjin line. This type of train may also be used on the Xi’an-Zhengzhou, Shanghai-Nanjing, Wuhan-Guangzhou and Beijing-Guangzhou lines in the future.

The train purchase is only a small part of China’s high-speed rail project, because China will independently design and produce high-speed trains that can travel 300 km/h, said Hu Yadong, Vice Minister of Railways, who signed the contract with Siemens.

Under the agreement, China will not only acquire trains, but also Siemens’ technologies. That is, Siemens will sell three sample trains to China and the necessary parts to build the remaining 57 trains. Siemens will provide its Chinese partner, CNR Tangshan Locomotive & Rolling Stock Works, with nine key technologies. In addition, the 60 trains will be labeled with a Chinese brand.

It is reported that China and Siemens will jointly set up a specialized technology joint-venture corporation to insure train production in the future. And finally, China will solely control the most advanced technologies in Europe.

The Railways Ministry’s plan shows that the Chinese-produced train will account for 30 percent of total production in the first phase, 50 percent in the second phase and 70 percent in the final phase. In June 2008, the first Chinese-made high-speed train will be finished.

The planned Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train line will be 100 km shorter than the current railway, but its passenger capacity will be triple the current level. The new line is expected to accommodate 120 million passengers every year, which will ease the current railway transfer problem between the two cities.

Boosting development

The high-speed train line means more than just strengthening the transportation capability. Because there are many big cities along the line, such as Bengbu of Anhui Province and Xuzhou of Jiangsu Province, the new line will promote the economic and social development of east China.

It took four years to complete feasibility studies on maglev technology for the Shanghai-Hangzhou route. Professor Sun Zhang of Shanghai’s Fudan University, a railway specialist, said, “It is very wise to adopt different technologies on these two train lines according to their individual conditions.”

Professor Sun is one of those who first discussed the feasibility of building high-speed train lines in China, and he witnessed the efforts to realize this goal over the past 10 years. He said he believed that the safe operation of a maglev train line in Shanghai has proved that, technically, the maglev technology can be safely used on a much longer train route. Although the cost of building a maglev train line is still high, he said he was confident that the cost would be lowered as more homemade maglev trains and railway lines are built.

Wang Shilan, an economic expert from Zhejiang University who has participated in the maglev project study since 1995, said, “It is a wise decision to build a maglev train line between Shanghai and Hangzhou. Because Shanghai is one of the economic centers of China, and Hangzhou is a famous tourist city, it is a natural requirement to build fast and comfortable train lines to ease the transportation strains between the two cities.”

It is reported that construction of the 170-km-long maglev project is scheduled to begin in late 2006, and to be finished in 2008, with a total budget of 35 billion yuan. The line is expected to be put into operation in 2010. The trains’ speed will be limited to 450 km/h in rural Shanghai areas, and below 200 km/h in urban Shanghai for safety reasons.

Experts said that once the maglev train line, which links Shanghai, Jiaxing and Hangzhou, is finished, it will take less than 30 minutes for a one-way trip between Shanghai and Hangzhou, which will bind the two cities more tightly.

The first high-speed maglev train, to be built by Chengdu Aircraft Industrial (Group) Co. Ltd., will be put into trial operation around July. The train, with an all-digital design, can carry 90 passengers and run at a speed of up to 500 km/h. The company, the first civil aviation-related company to produce maglev vehicles, will hold full rights to the technologies adopted in the project, and will become the base producer of China’s high-speed maglev vehicles.