IT used to take the best part of 24 hours to travel by train from Beijing to the southern boomtown of Guangzhou.
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But as of Wednesday , when the world’s longest high-speed rail line opened for business, the 2298-kilometre journey has been cut to a mere eight hours.
The trains travel at an average speed of 299km/h, passing through five provinces as they tear through the countryside.
China’s high-speed rail network is one of the country’s most expensive infrastructure projects and a symbol of its long-term ambitions.
Yet the program has recently been plagued by scandal – a bullet-train crash killed 40 people; a section of track collapsed in the rain; and a top railway official was sacked for corruption, raising concerns about its safety, sustainability and cost.
On Wednesday, one bullet train left Beijing for Guangzhou at 9am. An hour later, another began its journey in the opposite direction. The Beijing-bound train was briefly delayed by snow in the afternoon, and the South China Morning Post live-blogged the whole journey.
At one point, the train slowed to 183km/h, probably because of the weather.
The world’s longest line consists of four main divisions, running between the capital Beijing, the central transport hub Zhengzhou in Henan province, Wuhan in central China, and Guangzhou.
The line connecting Wuhan to Guangzhou opened in 2009, and the one from Beijing to Zhengzhou held its first trial run over the weekend.
The line stops in 35 cities and will eventually reach Hong Kong, and 155 pairs of trains will run every day. Older trains linking Beijing and Guangzhou will remain in service.
Business-class tickets on the line sell for £270 ($420) – more than a month’s salary for many of Beijing’s low-level white-collar workers.
Standard seats cost $134 – about twice as much as a bunk on an older train, though slightly cheaper than most flights.
China’s high-speed rail program was set up in 2007, and its first line, linking Beijing and nearby Tianjin, opened just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The system now has more than 9302 kilometres of track.
The railways ministry has announced plans to invest $386billion to complete a 16,093-kilometre network by 2020, with four main lines running east to west and four from north to south.
A bullet train accident in July 2011 outside the coastal metropolis Wenzhou sparked widespread public outrage over the speed of construction and corruption within the ministry.
One train rear-ended another, derailing eight cars and sending four hurtling off a bridge.
In response, the ministry launched an investigation into the crash – the culprit was identified as a signal equipment malfunction – and reduced the trains’ top speed by 48km/h.
Five months before the crash, the head of the ministry, Liu Zhijun, had been sacked for corruption.
Afterwards, a series of exposes in the Chinese press revealed that railway officials had accepted enormous bribes, handed lucrative contracts to friends and cut corners on construction materials.
In March, a 300-metre section of high-speed rail track in central Hubei province collapsed after heavy rains – it had been set to open two months later.
A whistleblower told Chinese media the construction company had been using earth to build the track instead of gravel, leaving it dangerously vulnerable to bad weather.
Railway authorities have said they will prioritise safety in future.
Some analysts say China’s rail system is necessary for continued growth, after the huge investments in the rail system that shielded China from the worst effects of the 2009 global financial crisis and an economic slump earlier this year.
Yet the project has proved costly.
The railways ministry, one of China’s biggest borrowers, is saddled with $296billion of debt. It lost $1361million in the first half of this year alone.
Though the ministry has not disclosed the total cost of the Beijing-Guangzhou line, the section between Wuhan and Guangzhou cost $18 billion.
Guardian
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