Totally record breaking....China will build 16,000 km of high spd railway (all designed to be above 300 km/hr) before 2012....Simply awesome....lol Still many on going rail way projects. The Beijing-Guangzhou-Hong kong high speed railway is under construction. It is being built at 350km/h standard. And $99 flights aren't sustainable for any airline in the long run, that's why a lot of western airline bankrupted over the past 20 years, meaning rail is really the only long term option for low cost rapid sustainable travel. China's self engineered Maglev high speed train which could travel up to 500km/hr China unveils 'world's fastest train link' Sat Dec 26, 7:54 am ET BEIJING (AFP) – China on Saturday unveiled what it billed as the fastest rail link in the world -- a train connecting the modern cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 350 kilometres (217 miles) an hour. The super-high-speed train reduces the 1,069 kilometre journey to a three hour ride and cuts the previous journey time by more than seven and a half hours, the official Xinhua news agency said. Work on the project began in 2005 as part of plans to expand a high-speed network aimed at eventually linking Guangzhou, a business hub in southern China near Hong Kong, with the capital Beijing, Xinhua added. "The train can go 394.2 kilometres per hour, it's the fastest train in operation in the world," Zhang Shuguang, head of the transport bureau at the railways ministry, told Xinhua. Test runs for the service began earlier in December and the link officially went into service when the first scheduled train left the eastern metropolis of Wuhan on Saturday. By comparison, the average for high-speed trains in Japan was 243 kilometres per hour while in France it was 277 kilometres per hour, said Xu Fangliang, general engineer in charge of designing the link, according to Xinhua. Beijing has an ambitious rail development programme aimed at increasing the national network from the current 86,000 kilometres to 120,000 kilometres, making it the most extensive rail system outside the United States. China unveiled its first high-speed line at the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 -- a service linking the capital with the port city of Tianjin. In September, officials said they planned to build 42 high-speed lines by 2012 in a massive system overhaul as part of efforts to spur economic growth amid the global downturn. The network uses technology developed in co-operation with foreign firms such as Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom. Wuhan Guangzhou High Speed Rail [video=youtube;2Hnne7brqHo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hnne7brqHo"[/video]
More large project: Tianxingzhou Bridge finished and was put in service today. The bridge is located in Wuhan city too. It should be the 6th or 7th crossing Yangtze river bridge in Wuhan area. The bridge links the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed raiway and Beijing-Wuhan high-speed railway. What makes the bridge special is its tech requirement: It is a double-deck bridge for highway and high-speed railway respectively. 4 rail tracks and 6 lanes of highways are on the bridge. Its load capacity is 20,000 tons. This makes it the heaviest load-bearing cable stay bridge in the world. The trains will run on it at speed of 250 km/hour. The bridge should be able to allow the trains to have emergancy stop on the bridge. The total length of the bridge is 4657 m with main span of 504 meters, surpassing the Oresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden. The high requirement makes the bridge extremely expensive in China's stanrard. The total cost is 11 billion RMB ( or US$1.6 billion).
High-speed Chinese train kicks French, Japanese butt * Alert * Print * Post comment UK, US not worth mentioning By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • Get more from this author Posted in Science, 29th December 2009 01:46 GMT Free whitepaper – Managing desktop software for fun and profit China's new high-speed passenger-train service broke world speed records on its maiden run over the weekend. According to a report in Monday's Financial Times, the Harmony express train travelled from Guangzhou in Guangdong province to the central-China city of Wuhan - a distance of 1,100km (684mi) - in under three hours. The previous rail service between the two cities took about 11 hours. The Harmony has a top speed of 394kph (245mph), and during its inaugural run it averaged 350kph (217mph), well faster than the 300kph (186mph) "maximum service speed" of France's TGV and Japan's Shinkansen, aka Bullet Train. By contrast, the FT points out that it takes the US's Amtrak Acela Express three and a half hours to traverse the 300km from Boston to New York City - although that train has hit 217kph (135mph) in time trials. China's Harmony express train isn't a mere demonstration project - it's scheduled to make the cross-country trip 56 times per day. "Expressways are not suited for China, which has large numbers of people but little space to spare," government adviser Zheng Tianxiang told the FT. "China should learn from Japan and Europe." By which he meant more rail, and fewer expressways and freeways as exist in the US. The Harmony system wasn't cheap. State reports have put costs at $17bn over the system's four-and-a-half year construction period, but government officials declined to confirm those numbers to the FT. There are certainly unaccounted ancillary costs, such as the $2.4bn that the city of Wuhan sunk into its new train station - which, like the new station in Guangzhou, is an inconvenient hour-long drive from the city center. Tickets aren't cheap, either. First class runs 780 Yuan Renminbi (£71, $114) and second class 490 (£45, $72). Also, the FT points out, the state-run China Southern Airlines has responded to the competition by dropping ticket prices to as low as 250 Yuan Renminbi (£23, $37) for advance reservations. But despite stiff price competition and inconvenient stations, Harmony is a good bet. As Zheng implied, the inevitability of future fuel-cost inflation and increased congestion make China's new high-speed rail system a smart investment. ® http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/29/china_harmony_rail/
I am bored to death here at times, not enough people. Tat's y when I travel to Asia I all excited, LOL
wow this is awesome.... i will head back to china and when i do i will take this once just for fun ^_^
