I think the most expensive HSR corridor ever built in China per km wise is the Yichang - Chongqing section of the Shanghai-Chengdu corridor. There are simply too many mountain ranges (like Three Gorges, Fuling, where the 816 wgpu project was located) to bore through. God knows how many TBM shields were spent. Unfortunately, given then unsolvable engineering challenges encountered in the late 2000s, the Yichang-Wanzhou section has a strict speed limit of <200kph, pretty much slowing down the supposed HSR traffic to a crawl (but still faster than the unnamable country’s Acela).
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Chinese Rail Transport Appreciation & News
- Thread starter cookiez
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True. But if you look at the bigger picture with regards to the Lanzhou-Xinjiang (actually Baoji-Xinjiang corridor since the mountain ranges begin at Baoji), freight and transportation of strategic materials matter a lot more on this corridor than passenger services. Also, the wind and sand storm problem you mentioned pretty much plagues all railways in Xinjiang and Gansu. There is even a famous video of a train plowing through sand-covered tracks on the Hetian-Ruoqiang line.It is totally wrong to look at such infrastructure from the lens of profitability which is a western/capitalism/privatism standing point. I am sure you grow up in such enviroment. China is none of them ever.
In a society where state is paramount, the state (King, Emperor or President) acts as head of a family. Some brothers live and work in the city like the eastern populations you mentioned, others live and work in the country-side managing summer house, farm lands etc. The father is responsible to make sure all members have the same living standard. To sustain a equal living condition for the forest house as in center of a mega city is NOT a business, nor is the father going to make a profit from himself or his children, nor is any children to complain about each other spending undue money.
Another example is China's "telephone to every village and later 4G to every village" programs. This will never happen in a capitalist country because operators will never build fibre lines or cell towers that does not make profit.
In short, China's seemingly "costly/wasteful" infrastructure program is like a person buying a summer house at high price for leasure. In the west it is a money making business of a property owner lending out apartments to tenants.
That is not to say that China ignores economic consideration, but that is like how one would consider where and how much to pay his summer house.
Not really right. the cost difference is the operation (electricity cost), not much of the line. 350 train and 250 trains are nearly the same cost to produce, but running at 350kmph consumes much more electricity than running at 250kmph. What was done was building 350 capable infrastructure at similar cost of 250 line and run at 250kmph to save electricity. It may further reduce to 200kmph because of the strong side wind that is frequent in the Hexi coridor and desert. There was many times that trains (any type) were forced to stop due to such wind. But in calm days, you can run up to 250.
Generally speaking, to brain storm a bit, if you were able to rewind the clock back to the early 2010s, wouldn’t quadrupling the numbers of 160kph capable conventional tracks on the existing Lanxin and Longhai Railways from Urumqi all the way to Xi’an (or even to Zhengzhou, or to Xuzhou and Lianyungang port) be a more viable option? And this would be done whilst the Xuzhou-Xi’an 350kph HSR would still be built. Ideally if you could have quadrupled tracks linking the Kazakh border and the port of Lianyungang facing Yellow Sea, wouldn’t that better facilitate the Belt and Road Initiative?