[photopress:chinarail.jpg,full,alignright]There is a new five-year drive to modernize the China’s railway transportation systems. China’s Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun says that in the five years from now to 2010, China will build 19,800 kilometers of new railway lines, modernize 15,000 kilometers of existing railway lines, boost passenger train speed to 200 km per hour with fast trains traveling at more than 300 km an hour, and increase the load of freight trains with a single engine hauling over 5,000 tons.
Under the railway development plan approved by the Chinese government, every year 4,000 kilometers of new tracks will be laid, 3,000 kilometers of existing tracks electrified, and more fast passenger trains, including the maglev trains, and large capacity freight trains introduced.
Minister Liu said he hopes that by 2010, China’s railway networks will be able to carry 30 percent more passengers and 30 percent more freight to alleviate the heavy demand for railway transportation. It will all be needed for the situation at the moment is not good.
In China, the energy consumption ratio of transportation by air, road and railways is 11:8:1. The railways in China transport of 75 percent of coal, 66 percent of ore, 62 percent of iron and steel, as well as 56 percent of grain.
China now has 75,000 kilometers of railways, with 6,500 kilometers built in the last five years. China’s economy has been developing at an annual rate of more than 9 percent on average, but the length of its railways grows at a 9.5-percent increase in five years.
Minister Liu said, ‘We have been using 6 percent of the world’s operational railways to move 23 percent of the total people and freight transported by the world’s railway systems each year.’
According to statistics released by Chinese Railways, a trade magazine, passenger trains in China provide only 2.41 million seats but sell 3.05 million tickets a day (4.2 million tickets at peak days), leaving many passengers no choice but to stand in the aisles; railway transportation authorities can provide 110,000 freight cars a day, but the nation’s daily average demand for freight cars is 280,000, with over 60 percent of the demand left unsatisfied.
Source: Xinhua