Since opening to traffic in July 2006, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has carried six mln passengers and five mln tons of cargo, setting the record highest speed of 100 km per hour in the permafrost region.

The railway is 1,142 kilometers long, wiht 960 kilometers standing over 4,000 meters above sea level, and 550 kilometers running through the permafrost region. It has adopted a variety of advanced technology such as active cooling down measures, thus effectively reducing the damage to the permafrost region, according to Wang Zhengming, head of the No. 1 Railway Survey and Design Institute, which is in charge of the survey and design of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.

With regard to the plateau health care technique, which is considered a hard nut to crack in the world, Qinghai-Tibet Railway managers have instituted a complete health care system for highland construction. The system has brought down the incidence of plateau lung edema and cerebral edema to below 0.59 percent and 0.31 percent, respectively, far below the 15.50 percent and 9.90 percent in other countries.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway has set many national and international records in terms of plateau environmental protection, such as 100 kilometers of passages for wild animals, alpine cold meadow and grassland restoration projects in earth-fetching areas over 4,000 meters above sea level, and treatment of low-temperature waste water from households in the condition of a low oxygen content.

Wang said that the success of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway established China's leading position in terms of railway design and construction in the permafrost region.

(Xinhua News Agency March 2, 2009)