China's amazing new bullet train
This year Beijing will spend $50 billion on what will soon be the world's biggest high-speed train system. Here's how it works.
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(Fortune Magazine) -- When lunch break comes at the construction site between Shanghai and Suzhou in eastern China, Xi Tong-li and his fellow laborers bolt for some nearby trees and the merciful slivers of shade they provide. It's 95 degrees and humid -- a typically oppressive summer day in southeastern China -- but it's not just mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the midday sun.
Xi is among a vast army of workers in China -- according to Beijing's Railroad Ministry, 110,000 were laboring on a single line, the Beijing-Shanghai route, at the beginning of 2009 -- who are building one of the largest infrastructure projects in history: a nationwide high-speed passenger rail network that, once completed, will be the largest, fastest, and most technologically sophisticated in the world.
Creating a rail system in a country of 1.3 billion people guarantees that the scale will be gargantuan. Almost 16,000 miles of new track will have been laid when the build-out is done in 2020. China will consume about 117 million tons of concrete just to construct the buttresses on which the tracks will be carried. The total amount of rolled steel on the Beijing-to-Shanghai line alone would be enough to construct 120 copies of the "Bird's Nest" -- the iconic Olympic stadium in Beijing. The top speed on trains that will run from Beijing to Shanghai will approach 220 miles an hour. Last year passengers in China made 1.4 billion rail journeys, and Chinese railroad officials expect that in a nation whose major cities are already choked with traffic, the figure could easily double over the next decade.
Construction on the vast multibillion-dollar project commenced in 2005 and will run through 2020. This year China will invest $50 billion in its new high-speed passenger rail system, more than double the amount spent in 2008. By the time the project is completed, Beijing will have pumped $300 billion into it. This effort is of more than passing historical interest. It can be seen properly as part and parcel of China's economic rise as a developing nation modernizing at warp speed, catching up with the rich world and in some instances -- like high-speed rail -- leapfrogging it entirely.
But this project symbolizes even more than that. This monumental infrastructure build-out has become the centerpiece of China's effort to navigate the global financial crisis and the ensuing recession.
Full Article:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/03/news/international/china_high_speed_bullet_train.fortune/index.htm
Video:
http://money.cnn.com/video/fortune/2009/08/05/f_fr_china_bullet_train.fortune/
That looks good and all......
but what if Soutel Drive was never built? ;D
Buck up little campers!
By the time the US gets around to high speed rail, they should have all the kinks worked out, and other countries systems will already be delapidated. :-\
At this rate one day we will be the cheap labor that China exports it's jobs to.
Quote from: thelakelander on August 19, 2009, 11:30:04 PM
That looks good and all......
but what if Soutel Drive was never built? ;D
220 Miles Per Hour? The really terrifying part of this is that the signaling system will be "MADE IN CHINA."
Yikes!OCKLAWAHA
Assuming the whole thing doesn't just fall over like the recent apartment building in China (http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,5406.0.html), they are definitely eclipsing the U.S. by decades.
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Over much of China we witnessed heavy construction work going on. Entire city districts, highways, railways, tunnels and long and high bridges. This span is a typical example, first the columns are constructed on site, then a special train with a crane and the bridge elements would come and lay down the bridge span - element by element.
Here are some more photos:
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The urban Chinese landscape shoots past the front conductor's window of the Tianjin-to-Beijing train.
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Work is full steam ahead at China Railway Construction sites between Beijing and Hebei province.
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One constant is the sight of massive concrete buttresses lined up one after another as far as the eye can see. The buttresses support the tracks for the high-speed trains. They weigh 800 tons each, and close to 200,000 of them are being built all across the country.
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Construction advances at breakneck speed along a China Railway bridge construction site in Nanjing. The total amount of rolled steel on the Beijing-to-Shanghai line alone would be enough to construct 120 copies of the "Bird's Nest" -- the iconic Olympic stadium in Beijing.
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A high-speed train travels through Beijing on its way to Tianjin. Almost 16,000 miles of new track will have been laid when the system is done in 2020.
Aha - but if there were environmentalists in China, how loud would the protests be that these unsightly concrete beams were destroying the landscape and the view?
The US could never erect something like this in the face of the environmentalist lobby. Well maybe not 'never,' but it'd be one hell of a fight.
When the dictator says build it, there isn't really much good that will come from bitching about it.
The United States has, within the last 30 or 40 years, had a big problem with commuting via trains, especially commuter trains or passenger trains; it's like trying to get your teenager to the dentist and once they're there, then you have to contend with strapping them in and holding them down to pull their teeth. It appears America just either don't like passenger trains or commuter trains, whether bullet, speedo, or whatever, or we just don't want to ride trains period; I think it has a lot to do with our love affair with our automobiles; we just plain love the independence and freedom of driving our cars and it's a personal "status symbol" type of thing; if you ride public transportation, i.e., bus, train, wagon wheel, stage coach, etc., it's like a downgrade of your status...not with all Americans, but I'll bet some or most Americans feel this way...they just don't want to be bothered with trains, public, or commuter transportation.......period!
Heights Unknown
Glad to see it happening somewhere! United States is past due for having an intercontinental system. Nothing is wrong with aircraft for high speed travel.....but trains could handle not only passenger but freight on the same lines! That would be just a matter of scheduling from region to region!US of A is behind times once again!