Prior to Olympic tourists benefiting from the huge construction
of the Beijing to Tianjin high-speed railway, local residents will
be able to enjoy the ride.
The Beijing-Tianjin inter-city passenger rail line will be
completed and open before August 2008 when the Beijing Olympic
Games open.
The train will move passengers between the cities in just half
an hour. This is 45 minutes quicker than at present. The train will
travel at 200 kilometers per hour (kmp) but can reach speeds of 350
kmp.
The 115-kilometre railway is expected to cost 12.3 billion yuan
(US$1.5 billion), said Ma Zhenhong, a press official with the
Tianjin Municipal Communications Commission in a phone
interview.
Earlier reports in the Beijing Times said the Ministry of
Railways and municipal government of Tianjin had each identified
2.6 billion yuan (US$325 million) for the project while Beijing
contributed its share by providing land and paying for the
resettlement of residents. A company has been established to manage
the project.
The construction of the passenger rail line started in July this
year. The work will finish before the end of next year and the
railway will be put into service before August 2008. "The rail link
is an important project to serve the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games,"
Ma said.
The Beijing-Tianjin inter-city passenger line is also believed
to be the pilot project for a massive high-speed rail network in
China. This will be the country's first high-standard passenger
rail service.
Capable of speeds up to 350 kilometers per hour, trains
manufactured by Tangshan Locomotive Plant in Hebei Province, which use Germany-based
Siemens technology, will be first put into use on the
Beijing-Tianjin inter-city passenger line.
Siemens and Tangshan Locomotive Plant were reported to have
jointly won a bid in 2005 to manufacture 60 locomotives each with a
design speed of 300 kmp for the railway ministry. Of these, three
will be entirely imported from Siemens and 57 will be domestically
manufactured. ?
Siemens was also reported to have won a contract together with
two other Chinese companies to provide signal, telecommunication
and electricity supply systems for the high-speed railway.
In order to promote economic integration of the
Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region China plans to build a two-hour circle
to cover major cities in the Bohai Rim Region. A total of 710
kilometers of inter-city railway lines will be built in the
region's inter-city network before 2020.
The Beijing-Tianjin inter-city passenger rail service will serve
as an axis of the regional rail network to meet the soaring demand
for travel between the cities.
Currently the municipalities, each with a population over 10
million, are linked by highways, expressways and rail. The present
railway system is under pressure handling 25.55 million passengers
annually. ?
The new passenger rail line is expected to handle 32 million
passengers in 2008 and 54 million in 2015.
There are currently three expressways under construction that'll
link the two cities.
(China Daily November 27, 2006)