Bullet trains running on the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway, China’s first high-speed railway commissioned 10 years ago, increased their speed to 350 kilometers per hour on Wednesday from 280-300km/h.
That means the 120km run from the Chinese capital to the northern industrial powerhouse takes a little more than 20 minutes. Xinhua reported that the increase in speed could allow more trains to shuttle passengers to meet a growing market demand.
After Wednesday’s change in train speed, there will be 272 trips available per day, while the maximum daily passenger transport capacity has subsequently grown by 6,200 to 157,000, according to the China Railway Corp.
More then 82,000 passengers used the line on a daily basis in the first half of 2018.
After 10 years of operations, the line has recorded 250 million passenger trips in total, making China the world’s No.1 country for high-speed railways with a total of 25,000km of high-speed track, accounting for two-thirds of the world’s total, where trains run at no less than 200km/h.
The rolling stock of the express links will also be progressively replaced by the new Fuxing, which translates as “rejuvenation” and is known as a China Standardized EMU (electric multiple unit) train with more streamlined locomotives.
The trains have undergone testing at more than 400 km/h, which is faster than the 380 km/h that can be reached by the CRH380, the newest type of Hexie (harmony) high-speed train.
The fleet of Fuxing trains will soon shuttle commuters at 350km/h on other key routes linking Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities.
Fuxing trains on the 1,318km Beijing-Shanghai line will only take four and a half hours to reach their destination. Nearly 600 million people use this route each year, providing a reported US$1 billion in profit.
The windows of the carriages could become electronic screens so the whole train could look like a home theater, easing the fatigue of the journey.
The Shanghai maglev train has been running between the city center and Pudong Airport at speeds as high as 430km/h since 2002.
China is also developing a 400km/h Free Gauge Train, as well as the next-generation maglev train which runs at 600km/h, according to a Xinhua report earlier this year.
Research at a superconductivity laboratory at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu in western China is also gaining momentum for a prototype maglev train that can travel at a whopping 1,000km/h in a vacuum tube, faster than narrow-body jets such as Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s, which normally cruise at 700-800km/h.
A 45-meter tube has been constructed inside the lab after years of painstaking research. Serious science is behind this toy-like train on which a carriage can be constantly levitated at an altitude of 20 millimeters, either in motion or static, with a payload of up to 1 ton, reportedly a new record in the global race to develop the next generation of “floating trains.”
Read more: Bullets and bombs on China’s high-speed rail network
The Middle Kingdom continues to march forward even though President Xi and the YES men around him continue to mis-read the tea leaves!!
What??? That country is charging ahead under Xi`s leadership. As compared to the USA it is moving at light speed.
Oh yes I forgot the US has a big project on the drawing boards too, a high tech wall between it and Mexico. Not one single metre of highspeed rail to be found in that exceptional country. While Amtrack has a problem keeping trains on the track at a whopping 50 miles an hour. Could that be because Trump is so inept at governing the country?
And those trains deliver you downtown. No getting to an airport 50 kilometres out of town three hours earlier than your flight and landing another 50 kilometres from where you want to be. No patting down or exposing your genatalia to all and sundry in x ray machines. No waiting endlessly in line having orders barked at you by ignorant flight attendants. Geez just think, the NSA would be out of business over night.
Traveling by air unless it is cross ocean will be come like a horse and buggy ride compared to these 21st century trains. The US is so far behind the curve on this. Oh yes they are going to develope a war fighting capacity in space for a trillion or so. They are like a kid who just inherited a fortune and goes on a gigantic spending spree. Buying toys that have no useful purpose except killing third world people. Now they are just loading all of this on to credit cards. Oh and the wonder weapons they do make , and spend trillions, on are becoming obsolete in shorter and shorter time. So it is just a collosal waste of money.
When I travelled from Hengshan to Changsha around 2010, the older model achieved 350 km/h. It however consumed more energy than the new Fuxing model. China is very energy conscious on a macro scale!
America’s Bullet and Maglev trains lie among the ruins of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. While China invents the future the US keeps trying to replicate the glory of its "greatest generation."
Thomas Daniel Kuhn WESTERN PHONY GVTS ARE THIEVES!!
THEY ONLY WORRY FOR OWN POCKETS AND HELL
WITH THE OUNTRY’
Its the mind set that makes CHINA so diferent to USA ….U are used and still are panppared with use less laws and the politicians ( corrupted with $$$ to lobby ) in Washington ,
all of them are victims of Military Complex …the ordinary people have to
find their way to a better life .