China’s High-Speed Rail Reaches 200mph+!
4 years and $15 billion later...
While visiting my folks in Southern California, I watched the Hong Kong news coverage of China’s newly completed Wuhan-Guangzhou railway.
The news story reminded me of my article on California’s plans to bring high-speed rail to the Golden State.
The train runs at an average of 217mph and cuts the travel time between the cities of Wuhan in central China to Guangzhou in the south from 9 to 3 hours.
On previous visits to Hong Kong, I’ve ridden the metro (MTR, similar to the SF Bay Area’s BART system) transfer to the local railway (KCR, similar to California’s Caltrain), arriving at the Hong Kong-China border.
The system is very efficient, so this new system will make travel between the south (including Hong Kong) and north significantly easier.
The project is a milestone, showcasing China’s growing infrastructure and connecting commerce between hubs in the north and south.
The train system itself is a modern marvel:
Constructed in 4 years for $15 billion – for comparison, the new MGM City Center resort in Las Vegas cost $11 billion to complete.
Top speed of 245 mph(!)
Covers over 660 miles
In addition, China is constructing a Bejing-Shanghai railway, which is schedule for completion as early as 2013.
Although it can be argued that China faces fewer hurdles in developing projects of this scale, it is still amazing to what is possible when both public policy and technology are put together for such results.
It’s normal to test both the infrastructure and the trains at ~10% above the top speed in commercial service, which will be 350km/h (217mph) on the Wuhan-Guangzhou line. That speed was already reached in commercial service on the Beijing-Tianjin line, but only briefly on account of the relatively short distance.
Various recently completed lines in Europe are capable of supporting that speed, but operators are careful enough to gain some experience with the ECTS 2.0 signaling technology before permitting their latest-generation trains (Siemens Velaro, Alstom AGV) to actually run at 217-224mph, which they’re perfectly capable of.
What makes the Wuhan-Guangzhou line unique is that trains it can support 350km/h in commercial operations for almost the entire distance of 1069km. In practice, only non-stop express trains could actually make use of this feature, though.
Rafael
29 Dec 09 at 12:54 pm