Archive for the 'CRH bullet train' Category

The Economist with a major article — not all totally complimentary — on the galloping pace of building and expansion in China.

Some examples of growth.

Beijing’s new airport terminal, seen here during construction, was designed by the British firm Foster + Partners, and planned and built in four years by an army of 50,000 workers.

The terminal is 3km (1.8 miles) long. The floor space is 17% bigger than all the terminals at London’s Heathrow combined (including about-to-open Terminal Five). Part of a $3.8 billion expansion, which included the opening of a third runway in October, it is due to open at the end of this month, weeks ahead of schedule.

It is the ninth busiest airport in the world.

And it is part of the rush to improve China’s logistics infrastructure.

Between 2001 and the end of 2005 more was spent on roads, railways and other fixed assets than was spent in the previous 50 years. According to the state media, investment will see double-digit growth every year for the rest of the decade.

The world’s longest sea-crossing bridge is due to open in June: a 36km six-lane highway across Hangzhou Bay.
Shanghai is home to the current world-record holder for such a structure, the 32km Donghai bridge. This was opened less than three years ago to link the city with Yangshan port.
Yangshan is intended to be one of the world’s biggest deep-water facilities when completed at some point after 2010.
From August the 115km journey from Beijing to Tianjin, its nearest port, will be reduced to half an hour with the inauguration of a bullet-train link
Work began in January on a 1,300km line between Beijing and Shanghai which will be completed in five years’ time.
The world’s highest railway from Golmud to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa was completed in 2006.
Since the 1990s China has built an expressway network criss-crossing the country that is second only to America’s interstate highway system in length. By the end of 2007, some 53,600km of toll expressways had been built. The aim is to have 70,000km of expressways by 2020.
The World Bank says that China’s railways carry 25% of the world’s railway traffic on just 6% of its track length. In the past couple of years investment has grown considerably. This year’s target is $42 billion, compared with a total of $72 billion in the preceding five years.
The increase in air passenger traffic has been dramatic: from 7 million passengers in 1985 to over 185 million in 2007.
Source: The Economist

When China announced in 1998 that it would build a high-speed train line between Beijing and Shanghai railway companies all over the world saw a potential for riches beyond the dreams of avarice.

It was thought China would have neither the technology nor the capital for such an ambitious project leaving a huge contract open for somebody to build.

Wrong. A recent announcement by the State Council left the foreign companies with only bit parts to play in the second biggest rail project in China’s history, after the Qinghai-Lhasa line that opened on July 1, 2006.

Beijing has pretty much all the capital and technology it needs.

Foreign equity will be no more than 10% of the stock of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway Corporation, the entity that will build the line and will have a registered capital of RMB110 billion. Bank loans and bond issues will raise another RMB110 billion.

The latest estimate of the cost is around RMB220 billion($29.5 billion). The line will run for 1,318 kilometers through 20 tunnels, over 28 bridges and into 21 stations. It will require bridges over the Yellow and Yangtze rivers and will run parallel to the existing Beijing-Shanghai line, carrying only passengers and allowing the older line to devote itself exclusively to freight.

It will run at 300 kilometers per hour, it will cut the journey time from the current 10 to five hours, on the busiest route in China, which accounts for 10.2% of national railroad passenger volume. It will carry 80 million passengers a year after completion in 2010.

With 80 million passengers an investment of RMB220 billion starts to make sense. The fare will be RMB600-700, half the standard air fare.

The biggest stakeholder will be the Ministry of Railways, which is likely to invest RMB40 billion for a stake of 35%. The local governments of the regions through which the line will pass — Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu are likely to invest a total of RMB20 billion.
Source: Asia Sentinel

The latest version of bullet train in China will probably be launched this year. The body of the first Chinese designed and manufactured high-speed train has already rolled off the production line which means that it is keeping to schedule. The train is the latest model in the country’s China Railway High-speed (CRH) Series and China’s first locomotive capable of traveling at 300 kilometers per hour.

Slower CRH series — able to travel at 200 kilometers per hour — are already in service.

The company will deliver ten of the new trains to the Ministry of Railways in the first half of next year.

The trains, which can seat about 600 passengers, will run on the 115-km Beijing-Tianjin route before the Beijing Olympic Games in August 2008. They will reduce the journey time from the current 80 minutes to around half an hour.

Source: People’s Daily Online

China is installing railway lines as quick as it can. A railway line linking central China’s Wuhan City, seen here, to northern Shijiazhuang City will start construction soon. This will be, according to China News Services, the middle section for a passenger-only rail line between Beijing and Guangzhou.

There are 838 kilometers to build to join the other two sections but, when in place, it will allow trains traveling at up to 350 kilometers per hour. Price is RMB74.3 billion, or about $9.89 billion.

Completion is due in 2010 when it will halve the travel time from Guangzhou to Beijing to 12 hours and from Wuhan to Beijing to 6 hours.

A feasibility study on the railway section has been finished on Thursday by the China International Engineering Consulting Corporation (CIECC), entrusted by the State Development and Reform Commission and it now appears work will proceed.

Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun has said the long-awaited Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway is expected to begin construction soon. ‘Soon’ was as precise a date as was given.

He made the announcement at a national conference on railway innovation and, sadly, did not specify a date. But perhaps it would be fair to think of ’soon’ as being before the end of this year with a completion some considerable time after that.

Wonderful if it was completed in time for World Expo 2010 in Shanghai but considering the amount of work needed that is a big ask.

When finished the train should have a cruising speed of 300 kph and a top speed of 350 kph which will shorten travel time between the two cities from 13 hours to less than five.

At which point it starts to rival air travel. It is not the time taken by the flight that counts. It is getting to the airport, getting checked in and then all the nonsense at the other end.

Train takes you city center to city center and at five hours it would be the preferred option.

The project has been on the drawing board for about ten years and it was thought it would start last year to be in plenty of time for 2010 but that now seems a target too far.

The Beijing-Shanghai railway was initially estimated to cost RMB130 billion ($17.2 billion), but it is probably going to go beyond that because of the delay in starting.

It was one of the 10 goals set by the ministry for its 11th Five-Year period (2006-10). There will be 7,000 km of new track so the completion date of 2010 is a bit hopeful. After that comes a train system — Beijing-Tianjin, Wuhan-Guangzhou, and Zhengzhou-Xi’an. Which will be wonderful.
Source: China Daily

This month, to handle more passengers during the summer peak travel season, some bullet trains between Shanghai and Nanjing will double the number of carriages to 16.

Trains between Shanghai and Nanjing usually stop at Wuxi, Suzhou and Changzhou, all popular tourism destinations.

The extra carriages may also help ease a rise in passengers in late August when college students return to Shanghai for the autumn semester.

The back-to-school peak will run from August 25 to September 6.

Shanghai’s railways handled 18.67 million passengers last month, up 273,000, or 1.5%, from the same period last year.

High-speed trains are popular despite higher ticket prices thanks to fashionable interior designs, a comfortable environment and faster speeds. The domestically-made CRH, China Railway High-speed, trains came into use on April 18.

They were designed to reduce journey times between major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, by about two hours. They have an average speed of 200 kilometers per hour. This higher speed effectively increases passenger capacity 18% and cargo capacity 12%.
Source: Shanghai Daily

The media office of the Shanghai municipal government has denied that the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev rail line has been suspended. On the other hand it was not willing to give any information about the timetable for construction, which has yet to start, or if it would be completed in time for the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

If it is built, the line will stretch some 175 km and will carry trains running at speeds of up to 450 kph between the two cities.

The denial was something less than totally whole-hearted. An official from the Shanghai municipal reform and development commission said, ‘We know the National Development and Reform Commission approved a feasibility study on the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line in March last year, but that doesn’t mean the project will definitely be built.’

On Sunday, the Xinhua News Agency reported that the Shanghai government might shelve the construction of the line altogether. Xie Weida, a professor at the Institute of Railway & Urban Rail Transit at Tongji University, said China still lags a long way behind Germany in maglev-building technology.

He was quoted in the China Daily as saying, ‘If the maglev line is to be built, the major portions of the train will have to be imported from Germany. So far, we can only handle the construction of the rail and the train’s shell.’ Germany has said it does not want to invest in this project nor does it want to transfer key technology to China. The original report may well be true.
Source: China.org.cn

On the first day of the peak May holiday week, China’s railways carried 5.2m passengers.Last month China introduced its first 280 bullet trains as part of a scheme that will, according to to the railway ministry, eventually raise passenger capacity by 18% and freight capacity by 12%. Capable of up to 250kph, the new CRH (China Railway High-speed) trains have cut the journey time from Beijing to Shanghai by two hours to ten hours, and the trip from Shanghai to Suzhou in half. Tickets were mostly sold out during the holiday week.

heir introduction marked the sixth ’speed-up’ of China’s railways. For most of their first month in operation, however, they were attacked:

Not being very fast. (Despite a $3.8 billion investment in track upgrades, there are only 6,000km of track where the new trains can reach an average speed of 200kph. The ministry says it will more than double the amount of high-speed track by 2020.
Ticket prices have risen by 50% on some routes and more than doubled on others. This has caused resentment. The ministry has admitted that it might introduce ’substantial’ price cuts on some routes. Migrant workers have been complaining about ‘fast trains for the rich’.
Not being desperately reliable. The China Daily said that in the past month there have been three reported breakdowns of trains on the Beijing-Harbin line.
A train from Harbin in northeastern China pulled into Beijing station 4 hours and 52 minutes behind schedule.
The air conditioning system also broke down in the sealed carriages.

Sources: The Economist and International Herald Tribune

The recent May Day holidays proved, at least at one level, the feasibility of the new bullet trains which travel at up to 200 kilometers per hour.

Chinadaily.com.cn recently conducted a survey and found that about half of the respondents said they would like to try the trains during the week-long holiday.

Tickets for the trains have been selling fast across the country.

There are 256 bullet trains that traverse the country daily, including 26 that set off from Beijing, but there are almost no seats to be had.

Yu Xuejin, an official with Beijing Railway Station, was quoted by CCTV as saying: ‘Tickets for bullet trains during the holidays were all sold out.’

Railway departments have been handling an average of 4.26 million passengers daily during the holiday period, exceeding that of the Spring Festival. If all the bullet trains were totally sold out over the holidays then it is probable they will be a major success all year round.
Source: China Daily

China Railway Engineering and China Railway Construction, which are mainly responsible for construction and maintenance of the country’s railways, are planning initial public offerings — IPOs. Meanwhile, China Railway Express has plans for an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange which has already been approved by the railway ministry. But it has yet to apply for approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).

This may be the start of a deluge. Many companies within the railway industry are thinking of an IPOs to raise funds to try and keep pacewith China’s fast expansion of railways
The progress is staggering. It is very like the canal revolution when it happened in Britain or, perhaps more appropriately, the Victorian railway boom.

In China 140 pairs of high-speed trains with a speed of 200 km per hour or faster have been running since April 18 of this year. The number will increase to 257 by the end of this year. China has joined the ranks of countries with high-speed rail services with a vengeance. It used to be we only talked about France and its TVGs. No more. China is the place where high speed trains are happening.

If you take someone from ‘a’ to ‘b’ faster, then you can increase the number of people you carry.

To be simplistic: double the speed, double the potential passenger load because the train can do the same journey twice to the earlier version’s once.

The current speed boost would help to increase passenger capacity on the nation’s 77,000-km of rail lines by 18% and cargo capacity by 12%. And, if you are a passenger, the cheering news is that travel times between major cities are then slashed by up to half.

Railway construction and maintenance will continue to expand as a multi-billion-dollar project in China. It probably needs IPOs to support it.
Source: Jongo News