China
The Shanghai Maglev Train, a turnkey Transrapid maglev project, imported from Germany, is capable of an operational speed of 430 km/h and of a top speed of 501 km/h. It has connected Shanghai and Pudong International Airport since March, 2004. In April 2007, China opened several high speed rail lines between major cities, providing a network of 6,003 km, making it the world's largest high speed rail network. By 2012, China will have a 110,000 km rail network. Of that amount 13,000 km will be high speed rail, some line capable of going over 350 km/h, making CRH the largest, fastest, most technologically advanced high speed rail system in the world. However, the Maglev line has suffered from low ridership, and as of 2008 various expansion plans (e.g. to Hangzhou) remain stalled.
The Qinshen Passenger Railway (Qinhuangdao-Shenyang), China's first conventional high-speed line between, opened in 2003 with a maximum speed of 200 km/h (to be increased to 300 km/h). The Beijing-Tianjin high-speed rail, the first in China to support 300+ km/h, opened in August 2008. The Shitai Passenger Railway (Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan) started operating on 1 April with a speed of 250 km/h. The construction of the 1,318-km Beijing-Shanghai Express Railway started in April 2008; tracklaying began in July 2010. Additional lines are also under construction so that by 2015, the high-speed railway network in China will be larger than the combined length and capacity of the rest of the world.
On December 9, 2009, China test-ran the world's longest high speed railway line - the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, which reduces the travel time for the nearly 1000 km from Guangzhou to Wuhan to just over 3 hours. The maximum speed on this test run was 394 km/h. Commercial operation of Wuhan-Guangzhou High-speed railway between Guangzhou North station and Wuhan station started on December 26, 2009, at a maximum speed of 350 km/h. The last section of the railway between Guangzhou North station and Guangzhou South station was opened on January 30, 2010.
Read more about this topic: High-speed Rail In Asia, East Asia
Famous quotes containing the word china:
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—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
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Aged in wrong, the empires are declining,
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What shall I say to the young on such a morning?—
Mind is the one salvation?—also grammar?—
No; my little ones lean not toward revolt.”
—William Dewitt Snodgrass (b. 1926)
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—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)