The departure of a freight train from Shanghai to Nanjing on
Friday marked the beginning of operations on the new electrified
Beijing-Shanghai railway.
Twenty pairs of freight trains will run along the line every day
and double-decker container trains will also be in operation at the
same time. But the railway will not open for passenger transport in
the near future.
The Shanghai Railway Bureau has promised to increase the
electric power capacity, in order to have the railway in service
for passenger transport as early as possible.
Running through the municipalities of Beijing, Tianjin and
Shanghai and provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu, the
1,464-km Beijing-Shanghai railway links China's two booming
economic zones, namely, the Bohai Bay Rim and the Yangtze River
Delta, and forms the country's busiest railway corridor.
With a length only 2.2 percent of China's total railway mileage,
the Beijing-Shanghai railway will transport 8.9 percent of the
total goods and 12.4 percent of the total passengers handled by the
country's railway network.
China also plans to start the construction of a 1,318 km-long
high-speed railway between Beijing and Shanghai this year, which
will run parallel to the existing Beijing-Shanghai track. The
high-speed railway is expected to open for service in 2010.
China now ranks third in the world after Russia and Germany in
the length of electrified track.
The Ministry of Railways plans to electrify 6,000 km of track in
the 11th Five-Year?Guidelines period from
2006 to 2010.
Under the program, China's total railway length is expected to
extend from 74,000 to 85,000 km, of which, double tracked route
mileage will be 35,000 km, and the electrified track routes will
also account for 35,000 km by the year 2010.
(China.org.cn, Xinhua News Agency July 2, 2006)
