China joins club of bullet train nations
At 5:38 am sharp on Wednesday the sparkling white, futuristic No. D460 train departed Shanghai Station, heralding a new era of high-speed rail travel in China.
Reaching speeds of up to 250 kilometres (155 miles) an hour, the sleek machine covered the 112 kilometres to the neighbouring city of Suzhou in 39 minutes, cutting the journey time nearly in half.
With it, China also joined a small group of the likes of Japan, the United States and most of the European Union, running bullet trains.
"It felt like we were travelling on an airplane," 78-year-old Shanghai resident Chen Lijuan was quoted by state-run Xinhua news agency as saying. "In the past it took more than an hour to get here."
The carriages were spotless, with the seats striped blue and red looking like those on an aircraft, as students, families and businessmen on the Beijing-Tianjin route settled down for the trip, an AFP photographer said.
In keeping with the high-tech image, the trains support WiFi services for those with laptops and other mobile devices wanting to keep in touch.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Railways told AFP that 52 trains have been deployed on short distance services around China aimed at alleviating overcrowding on what is still the nation's most important form of transport.
By the end of the year, the ministry said 108 more trains will be added.
Liu Dongwei, a driver on the Shanghai-Suzhou line, said China's train technology had come of age, recalling how only a decade ago average train speeds were less than 50 kilometres an hour.
"My job has become easier -- more like operating an airplane," Liu, 38, said.
China, now the world's fourth-largest economy, is keen to show off the new bullet trains as evidence that it can develop its own technology in key sectors.
But they are still mainly built abroad on the basis of technology transfer agreements with industry heavy-hitters such as Japan's Mitsubishi-Kawasaki, Canada's Bombardier, German giant Siemens and France's Alstom.
The head of Alstom's operations in China, Alain Berger, said that given the complexities involving the installation of new tracks, signalling and power sources, Beijing's achievement was to be applauded.
"It is a huge achievement," said Berger.
The debut of China bullet trains on short-run lines such as Shanghai to Hangzhou, and Beijing to Tianjin, comes after months of testing the locomotives at normal speeds.
It is expected that the trains will expand national railway passenger capacity by 18 percent, or 340,000 seats a day, alleviating ticket shortages, especially during holidays.
However, currently only 6,000 kilometres (3,720 miles) of track can accommodate the high-speed trains, with most restricted to of 160 kilometres an hour on 14,000 kilometres of sub-standard track.
Until upgrades are made, trains will be forced to chug along at 120 kilometres per hour over another 22,000 kilometres.
Nevertheless by 2020, China hopes 13,000 kilometres of track, or about one-fifth of the nation's current 77,000 kilometres, will be able to handle bullet trains.
A drawback for the moment is that fares on the new services are nearly 50 percent more than current express trains.
"Tickets are quite expensive," said one passenger, who paid 42 yuan (5.43 US dollars) on the bullet service between Beijing to Tianjin.
The usual price on the fastest express train on the same line is 30 yuan.
Vice Minister of railways Hu Yadong lauded the achievement of what China has called its home-grown technological success.
"That length (of high-speed track) exceeds the total amount of rail lines capable of accommodating trains at that speed in nine European countries," Hu was quoted by the China Daily as saying.
In a public briefing held online Wednesday, Ministry of Railway spokesman Wang Yongping, added: "No country has ever achieved an increase in speed of this scope."
