High speed rail service begins from Beijing to Shanghai

Largest network on earth

David Crossley, Jun 30, 11.

The Beijing–Shanghai high speed rail line has opened today with simultaneous departures from Beijing and Shanghai, according to a story in Rail.co.

The 1,320km long line connects two major economic zones in China; the Bohai Sea Rim and the Yangtze River Delta. Construction of the line cost $33 billion and it is able to carry 80 million passengers a year which is double the current capacity on the route.

China now has the largest high speed rail network in the world, and is working on train service from Beijing to London.

CNN reports:

The new rail link will trim the journey time between Shanghai and Beijing –- China’s two most important cities -– to less than five hours.

With a construction cost of RMB 220.9 billion [$34 billion], the Shanghai-Beijing high-speed rail line is 1,318 kilometers long [819 miles] and took three years to complete.

The train broke world records during test runs, hitting 486.1 kilometers per hour [302 mph] in December 2010.

[Note: that is a record for a train on tracks; the record for all trains is 361 mph, achieved by a Japanese maglev train in 2003.]

China hits the rails