Big Black Book

New high-speed rail network could trump air travel
By Malcolm Moore, Daily Telegraph March 9, 2010

Railway passengers will be able to travel from King's Cross to Beijing in just two days on a journey that would be almost as fast as by airplane under ambitious new plans from the Chinese.

China is in negotiations to build a high-speed rail network to India and Europe with trains capable of running at more than 320 kilometres per hour within the next 10 years.

By using the Channel Tunnel, the network would eventually carry passengers from London to Beijing and then to Singapore, according to Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a senior consultant on China's domestic high-speed railways.

A second project would carry trains through Russia to Germany and into the European railway system, and a third line would extend south to connect Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia.

Passengers could board a train in London and step off in Beijing, 8,100 kilometres away as the crow flies, in just two days. Flying time is about 10 hours. They could go on to Singapore, 10,800 kilometres away, within three days.

"We are aiming for the trains to run almost as fast as airplanes," said Wang.

"The best-case scenario is that the three networks will be completed in a decade."

Wang said Beijing was already in negotiations with 17 countries over the rail lines, which would also allow China to transport raw materials more efficiently.

"It was not China that pushed the idea to start with," said Wang. "It was the other countries that came to us, especially India. These countries cannot fully implement the construction of a high-speed rail network and they hoped to draw on our experience and technology."

China is in the middle of a $740 billion Cdn domestic railway expansion project that aims to build nearly 30,500 kilometres of new railways in the next five years, connecting all its major cities with high-speed lines.

The world's fastest train, the Harmony Express, which has a top speed of nearly 400 km/h and links the cities of Wuhan and Guangzhou, was unveiled last year. Wholly Chinesebuilt, but using technology from Siemens and Kawasaki, it can cover 1,000 kilometres, the equivalent of a return journey between London and Edinburgh, in three hours.

Wang said the route of the three lines had yet to be decided, but that construction for the Southeast Asia line had begun in the southern province of Yunnan and that Burma was about to begin building its link. China had offered to bankroll the Burmese line in exchange for the country's rich reserves of lithium, a metal used in batteries.

"We have also already carried out the prospecting and survey work for the European network, and central and eastern European countries are keen for us to start," Wang said.

"The northern network will be the third one to start, although China and Russia have already agreed on a high-speed line across Siberia.

"From our point of view, the biggest issue is money. We will use government money and bank loans, but the railways may also raise financing from the private sector and also from the host countries.

"We would actually prefer the other countries to pay in natural resources rather than make their own capital investment."
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