When I Was Young

From TODAY, World
Tuesday September 2, 2008

New technology will enable bullet trains to run 30kmh faster than trains of the current generation. BLOOMBERG

BEIJING — China is planning to build the world’s fastest bullet train, to link Beijing with the financial capital Shanghai.

The Ministry of Railways says it is raising the speed it intends the new line connecting the cities to reach when it opens in 2012.

New technology will allow trains to travel at 380kmh, 30kmh more than the current generation of bullet trains, according to the ministry’s deputy chief engineer, Zhang Shuguang.

The high-speed line from Beijing to Shanghai has been an on-off project for several years, but work finally began in April.

Officials have been torn between improving the extensive and reliable but slow services linking cities across the country and building high-tech lines between major cities.

But they have also been encouraged by the initial success of the bullet train that since July has reduced journey times from Beijing to the nearest port at Tianjin to just half an hour.

With China’s two most important cities separated by 1,318km, the new line will be the longest high-speed railway to be built in one go in the world.

The Tianjin route uses 350kmh-trains that rely on technology imported from the German engineering giant Siemens.

But Mr Zhang said China’s own engineers had “mastered” the technology sufficiently to upgrade the trains’ speed further.

The extra would be sufficient to cut the journey time from five hours as currently planned to four hours, compared with current 10 to 12 hours.

While France’s famous highspeed train, the TGV, broke its 17-year-old world speed record last year when it hit a top speed of 574.8kmh, it only maintained that speed for a short period.

The Chinese trains would be designed to travel at top speeds for much of the journey in order to cut its duration.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH