Subscribe to RSSVideos: China Train Test Run 486kph
A Chinese high-speed train has broken a world record for the fastest unmodified commercial train.
According to China’s official Xinhua news agency, the new-generation CRH380 moved as fast as a low-cruising jet-plane during a trial run on what will become the country’s rail line between Beijing and Shanghai when it opens in 2012.
The train hit a speed of 486ks per hour.
China already has the world’s longest high-speed rail network, and it plans to cover 13,000 kilometres by 2012 and 16,000ks by 2020.
“It not only marks a milestone in the construction of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, but also is a major achievement of China’s technology innovation,” said a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Railways.
The track-laying was completed for the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail a few weeks back, part of a growing nationwide network of high-speed trains.
It again shows China’s growing place in high speed train building.
China is bidding to build Auckland’s electric trains and has also expressed interest in being involved in the CBD rail link project.
This report is in Chinese but has better images:
12 Comments
The NZ government should be looking at designation of high speed rail corridors for the future.High speed rail will not happen here for a very very long time but it will happen.
Hmmm so in two more years China will have trains traveling at 486km per hour while we have to wait for 3 more years for electrification works
Auckland to Wellington in an hour or so.
Pretty good speed. Ive only been on the Shanghai maglev train which goes 431 km/h.
It takes an hour to fly by plane, I doubt even this train could get there in that time.
Eric, I’m pretty sure this train will most probably carry at least 500-800 people. way more than any plane and probably more economical.
HSR from Wellington to Auckland is not gonna happen until we get at least 10 million people in NZ,
From the Wellington Regional Rail plan
The distance between Auckland and Wellington is approximately 660km; adopting an average journey speed of 250kph the quickest journey time would be approximately 2hrs and 40min.
Using published project costs from HSR projects of a similar nature and distance (Seoul to Pusan, Korea), the unit cost rate would be in the order of $85 and $130m per route kilometre.
This equates to a project with a potential capital cost in the order of $56Billion to $86 Billion (plus rolling stock typically in the order of 500-750m).
@ Carl, It will depend if you can get 500-800 people on a train per journey. I very much doubt that if we do get a high speed rail link our trains will need to have that capacity.
Eric, the flight time may be about an hour but the time in the air is only one component of the trip. Once you factor in airport access, check in etc it takes about two to three times that long to take a plane from Auckland to Wellington.
I think the most realistic idea for New Zealand is fastish trains on the existing tracks on the Auckland Hamilton Tauranga corridor. A relatively minor ugrade for 160km/h trains could see the trip take just under three hours. That is competitive with both driving and flying.
Except if you check in online before hand and have no luggage you can turnup just before takeoff. Good for people on business. You will also have to take things like access into account when taking the train aswell, I’m sure you will point out that you can take public transport to the train but you can also take the bus to the airport. So taking that out plane still does have an advantage.
That is true, but however streamlined the check in procedure for a plane it will always be longer than stepping onto a train. In some cases (e.g. Victoria’s regional Vline trains) you can step onboard literally one minute before it departs and even buy a ticket from the conductor once already underway.
Furthermore, airports as a rule are pretty remote due to the large land requirements and the noise they create. They tend to be on the outer fringes of cities making transport to them typically time consuming and expensive to get to. Wellington is blessed with an airport unusually located in its inner suburbs however.
Rail stations on the other hand tend to be in the CBD. This is obviously very convenient for city based travellers, but the centralised location also puts the terminal closer to the wider population of the region.
Eric - to start with, what were you talking about china or nz?
I don’t care about nz flight times, we’ll never get a high speed rail in our life time, let alone a service that is even decent so there is no point talking about it.
they form a super city, yet don’t even service pukekohe with electric sets, what kind of city does that? one that is going backwards.
for arguments sake, i was talking about china. it will probably take 500-800 people on those trains.
as mentioned by the time time you check in and get to the air port it is not an hours journey for that flight.
we flew around china when went for the games in 08 and it was a a joke. id take the train over there any day, train travel in mainland china is amazing. 5 hours isn’t really much longer than what the whole to the airport - at the airport - on the plane - from the airport journey would be anyway.
Why are they calling this the fastest train? the french made that train hit 578kms, or is this the fastest unmodifed train?