Tunnel runs through world's largest, deepest high-speed rail station
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-17 08:34:27|Editor: Yurou
New China TV Published on Sep 16, 2017
Chinese engineers have dug 5,000 meters of a tunnel which runs through the world's largest and deepest high-speed rail station. The new terminal, which is under construction, is 102m (305ft) under the Badaling Great Wall in Beijing. It will occupy 36,000 square meters (387,500 square feet). The tunnel and the station are part of a railway line being built to facilitate the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Thursdays 8:01 a.m. train from Nanjing to Beijing was the start of a new era for Chinas high-speed rail network. The string of cars darted north at 350 kilometers per hour the worlds highest operating speed for the first time since 2011, when a railway corruption scandal led to a 300 kph cap.
For now, only the 14 high-speed trains that run on the railway between Beijing and Shanghai will see speed increases. Throughout history, the railroad between Chinas two biggest cities has been at the frontier of fast. Since the first large-scale speed increases in 1997, the time it takes to go from Beijing to Shanghai has been reduced from nearly seventeen hours to around four and a half hours. Other cities in eastern China, too, are now just a few hours away from the capital.
(Travel times between Beijing and the provincial capitals of East China, relative to other provincial capitals (gray lines). By Qin Zhaoying and Liu Chang/Sixth Tone)
Over the past decade, most time reductions have come from the large-scale expansion of Chinas high-speed rail network. By the end of 2016, the total operating length of Chinas high-speed rail system had reached 22,000 kilometers long enough to stretch halfway around the world.
As a result, traveling from Beijing to far-flung cities across the country has become less time-consuming. Guangzhou in the south, for example, is now much closer to the capital, as are other cities that lie along the track.
(Travel times between Beijing and cities on the Beijing-Guangzhou line, relative to provincial capitals not along that route (gray lines). By Qin Zhaoying and Liu Chang/Sixth Tone)
Relative to other parts of the country, travel to Northeast China has improved the least. Development of high-speed railways has been slower in this region, and rail travel was better there to begin with, in part due to colonial powers Russia and Japan.
(Travel times between Beijing and the provincial capitals of Northeast China, relative to other provincial capitals (gray lines). By Qin Zhaoying and Liu Chang/Sixth Tone)
In 1949, the year the Peoples Republic of China was founded, traveling from Beijing to Zhengzhou about 600 kilometers to the south, took 10 hours longer than traveling from Beijing to Shenyang an equal distance to the north. Now, however, a trip to Zhengzhou takes just two and a half hours, while traveling to Shenyang takes four.
(Travel times between Beijing and Chinas provincial capitals, grouped by distance from Beijing. By Qin Zhaoying and Liu Chang/Sixth Tone)
All graphical data from National Train Timetable of China (1959-2016) and Train Timetable, Vol. 4 (Nov. 15, 1949).
New railway to connect SW-NW China
Xinhua Tuesday 26 September 2017 11:51 CEST
A new railway will be put into full operation in China on Friday. It will connect Chongqing in southwest China's Sichuan Province to Lanzhou in its neighboring Gansu Province in northwest China. The Lanzhou-Chongqing Railway will cut the travel time between the two cities from 20 hours to seven and a half hours.
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