China plans to build a fast passenger railway
network totaling more than 12,000 km to connect provincial capitals
and other main cities, a senior official with the Ministry of
Railways has said.
The plan includes four north-south routes, four
east-west routes and three regional inner-city networks, with the
speed of the trains exceeding 200 km per hour, said Su Shunhu,
deputy director of the Transportation Bureau with the Ministry of
Railways.
The four north-south routes are Beijing-Shanghai,
Beijing-Wuhan-Guangzhou-Shenzhen, Beijing-Shenyang-Harbin (Dalian)
and Hangzhou-Ningbo-Fuzhou-Shenzhen, while the four east-west
routes are Xuzhou-Zhengzhou-Lanzhou, Hangzhou-Nanchang-Changsha,
Qingdao-Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan and
Nanjing-Wuhan-Chongqing-Chengdu.
Meanwhile, the regional inner-city networks will be
built in the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and the
Bohai Bay rim.
Su Shunhu also said China will build another 16,000
km of railways, mainly to expand the railway network in the
west.
China is at a crucial phase in its upgrading of its
railway transport capacity to achieve further rapid economic
growth, and the government has issued its mid-term and long-term
railway network policies, which involves extending China's railway
length to 100,000 kilometers by 2020.
China aims to have separate tracks for passenger
and freight trains on main trunk lines by 2020, with half of all
the railways to be electric and double-track.
(Xinhua News Agency April 8, 2006)