High-speed rail drives integrated regional growth
WHEN the first high-speed railway in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region starts operation at the end of 2019, the trains will run on the 287-kilometer-long railway passing the regional capital of Hohhot, Ulanqab City and Zhangjiakou City in neighboring Hebei Province. It will run along side the Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed railway.
The two lines will reduce the travel time between Beijing and Hohhot from the current nine hours to three hours.
By then, all provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland will have high-speed train service, except the autonomous region of Tibet.
China launched its first high-speed railway line, the Beijing-Tianjin high-speed train service, 10 years ago on August 1, 2008. The high-speed train, running at over 300km per hour, takes 35 minutes from Tianjin to Beijing.
The daily frequency of Beijing-Tianjin intercity trains has increased from 94 one-way services to 217, with 250 million passengers carried in the past decade, according to the Beijing railway bureau.
The length of high-speed railway lines in China rose from zero 10 years ago to 25,000km by 2017, accounting for 66 percent of the world’s total.
More than 4,000 bullet trains run in China, carrying 4 million passengers every day, according to the China Railway Corp.
When Han Yonghui first left his home in Xiangfen, northern Shanxi Province, to open a small restaurant in 1997, he had to walk for an hour to the nearest train station, wait in line overnight to buy a ticket, before boarding a packed slow train that took him to Tianjin in 18 sweltering hours.
All that changed in 2014 when high-speed trains reached Han’s hometown, cutting his travel time to Beijing, where he runs his restaurant, to six hours.
“My high-school children are able to visit me during every summer vacation,” said Han.
High-speed railway connecting Beijing and Guangzhou has shortened the travel time across the 2,300km distance to eight hours. The new Fuxing bullet trains travel at 350kph, going from Beijing to Shanghai in four hours and 18 minutes.
By 2020, China’s high-speed rail length is expected to reach 30,000km, covering 80 percent of major cities.
High-speed rail has helped with the integrated regional development of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province, a national strategy initiated in 2014.
Wang Ye, from Beijing, takes the C2205 to work every morning. In 24 minutes, the train takes her to Wuqing District in Tianjin, where Wang works at Tieke Zongheng, a train parts manufacturing factory.
Among the 150-plus staff in the factory, more than 20 commute from Beijing to the company every day. “High-speed trains have made cross-city commute possible,” Wang said.
By the end of 2017, the highspeed trains had carried more than 7 billion passengers. Cargo delivery via high-speed trains started in 2016, with more than 500 cities used as pilot areas for express services.
In fact, China’s high-speed railway has gone global. In 2014, China completed the construction of its first overseas high-speed rail in Turkey. In June 2015, China and Russia inked deals for 770km of track connecting Moscow and Kazan. In October 2015, China and Indonesia signed a deal on the joint-venture construction of a high-speed rail between Jakarta and Bandung.