All is not what it seems within China's High Speed Rail development.

Hendrik_2000 said:

No one built bridges from stone anymore these days either steel or concrete. Stone bridges construction is probably built in pre PRC era or right after PRC

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bladerunner said:

China has identified more than 6,000 bridges that are damaged or dangerous.

The government in Beijing has pledged to fix or rebuild all the damaged bridges in an ambitious plan to make the country's road network safer by 2010, the China Daily newspaper reported on Tuesday.

If those bridges were built during the current governments time that is nearly 100 poorly built bridges a year plus roads and housing.

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solarz said:

That's a pretty big IF you're making there. You realize that there are bridges in China that date back thousands of years?

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bladerunner said:

This collapsed bridge certainly looks like owing to bad workmanship or something.You certainly cant blame it on storms or earthquake

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and this one

courtesy of China daily

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and way back in 2007 China has identified tousands of dangerous bridges for various reasons

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Chinese bridge collapse kills 36

Rescuers carry a victim at the site of a collapsed bridge in Fenghuang

'Rushed' building projects
In pictures: Bridge collapse
At least 36 people were killed and dozens injured when a bridge collapsed while under construction in the town of Fenghuang, in China's Hunan province.

The bridge had reportedly been scheduled to open later this month at what is a popular Chinese tourist spot.

There were 123 workers on the bridge removing scaffolding at the time of the accident, according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
China has identified more than 6,300 bridges that are damaged or dangerous......Xiao Rucheng, of the Institute of Bridge and Structural Engineering, was quoted by the paper as saying that many of the newer bridges had been built in haste,

The government in Beijing has pledged to fix or rebuild all the damaged bridges in an ambitious plan to make the country's road network safer by 2010, the China Daily newspaper reported on Tuesday.

If those bridges were built during the current governments time that is nearly 100 poorly built bridges a year plus roads and housing.

another view of the Hangzhou bridge collapse.

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[/QUOTE

I don't have time to search into how many bridges China built over the years but bridges do collapse because of natural disaster. This year China experience the most severe flooding in south China . Nobody can foreseen or calculate natural disaster Not even Japan or US. The famous Seattle bridge is an example .or most recent the Mississippi bridge collapse.

China is still developing country and the enforcement of load limit is patchy at best. Combine with disregard of load limit will result truck plunging down the river. Every bridges has limit and people has to learn how to live with load limit

So nothing new here

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Beijing-Shanghai rail still superior despite recent mishaps
15:10, July 21, 2011

The Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway was recently in an awkward situation. It had a power supply stoppage on July 10, 11 days after it began operation, causing the delay of some trains. Two days later, a high-speed train broke down in the midway, causing more delay. The more unexpected thing is that high-speed trains again had troubles on July 13 and July 14.

Such frequent accidents made the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway the subject of many questions. The Ministry of Railways announced that the "outage" proved that the high-speed railway has good security, and it will make sure the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway makes it through this period of frequently occurring mishaps as soon as possible.

The Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway is destined to be subjected to many high expectations as the high-speed railway with the longest one-time construction mileage, the most investments and the highest standards of technology since the founding of the new China. Therefore, it is not unreasonable for people to have doubts about the high-speed railway when such sudden accidents occur. However, related departments do not only need public tolerance and understanding. The most urgent thing is to show the superiority of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway with excellent achievements to restore people's confidence.

Of the advantages of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, the primary one should be its outstanding safety performance, and currently, it is just a focus of the disputes. Logically, the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has integrated numerous distinctive technologies, must be extremely excellent in the area of safety performance.

However, since failures have frequently occurred in the railway, passengers worry about its safety. The Ministry of Railway said that the abnormal stops of the trains were caused by the high safety precautions. That could be an explanation. However, does it mean the trains on the railway will frequently have abnormal stops if they meet bad weather such as rainstorms and strong winds? If high safety factors could lead to high-frequency failures, does it mean that the railway is actually fragile in another way?

An important advantage of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway is the speed and efficiency. The speed of 300 kilometers per hour can shorten the travel time between Beijing and Shanghai to less than five hours, and it will greatly alleviate the tense situation of insufficient passenger transportation capacity. However, what has worried passengers is that some trains were as much as several hours behind schedule during the recent failures. In this case, the speed advantage of the railway will be weakened greatly. Facing the severe challenges, the Ministry of Railway must take some effective measures and guarantee both the speed and safety of the railway. Otherwise, realizing the goal of transporting about 160 million passengers per year will be nothing but empty talk.

Furthermore, the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway should have a sound management system and provide first-class services for passengers. However, facts have proved that the railway still has a long way to go in this aspect. It can be seen from the recent failures that there are many problems concerning the services on the bullet trains. For example, after power outages, passengers on trains lacked access to food and dinking water as well as effective information, which fully exposed the lack of service awareness among the staff of high-speed trains. In addition, due to the unsound emergency response mechanism, most passengers, who paid much money for high-speed train tickets but failed to enjoy high speed, did not receive the compensation they deserved. The Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway not only needs to ensure smooth functioning, but also should establish a sound management system and provide better services for passengers.

A silver lining of the frequent failures is that the damage can be minimized because the earlier a problem is exposed, the earlier it will be solved. Railway authorities should draw lessons from the frequent failures and try their best to discover and solve hidden problems in order to bring the advantages of high-speed trains into full play.

By Zhu Xiaolong from Guangming Daily, translated by People's Daily Online

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The train model in question is Kawasaki E2(CRH2), which was never supposed to run on conventional rail tracks.

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