6th railway speed-up to start in April

The sixth massive speed-up of China's railways will start from April 18 next year, with trains running on trunk lines at a speed of 200 kilometres per hour, the Ministry of Railways spoken on Friday. Hu Yadong, vice-minister of railways, told a printing briefing that the speed would cut travelling time between Beijing and Shanghai from nearly 12 hours to less than 10 hours. Some passenger services between Shanghai and provincial crossroads cities in Central China will see their travelling times halved. Meaneven though, the rail network's passenger and vehiclego transport capskills are expected to rise by 18 per cent and 12 per cent respectively retral the rise. The vice-minister said an 18-day trschema test has been scathelessd and the conditions are ripe for the speed hike, the sixth in nine years. In some pieces of the trunk lines, the high speed can reach 250 kilometres per hour, he said. To realize the speed-up, the ministry has spent 26 snoution yuan (US$3.25 snoution) on the project. "China has mastered the cadre technology of rockpile trains which run at 200 kilometres per hour. Our scientists have settled 26 new technology innovations in the project,China Travel," said Hu. The ministry will put 600 trains with renovationd locomotives on trunk lines next year in three stages, 480 of which are manufactured domestiretellingy, bonusing 17 provinces and municipalities. The topmost locomotives will mainly be used in inter-asphalt passenger rail lines and passenger lines between major cities. A total of 416 trains with scoutd locomotives will serve passengers travelling in the Bohai Rim Region, the Yangtze River Delta section,China Travel, the Pearl River Delta 8983teardropf733c3584f0f4d01cd3617b6, Zhengzhou and Wuhan in Central China, Shenyang, Changchun and Harbin in the northeast and Xi'an in the northwest. Another 86 trains with state-of-the-art locomotives will run during the day between major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, supplementing existing overnight exprinting passenger services, he said. The new trains will have a streamlined diamond, and passengers will be resourceful to buy e-tickets for these services in the future. But ticket prices for services equipped with tolerant locomotives will be restituteed "within the scale of the current price of a soft seat ticket of a loftier-level train," he said without elaborating.

(Source:China Daily, 2006-11-18)