China to build world’s fastest 510-km-long intercity high-speed rail line
By ANITuesday, November 2, 2010
BEIJING - China has approved plans for a 10.6 billion dollars railway link to connect two major western cities of Xi’an and Chengdu -being claimed as the world’s fastest intercity high-speed rail line.
Trains on the 510-km-long line will run at a speed of 250 km per hour, slashing travel time between the two cities to about two hours from the current 13 hours, said Wang Jie, chief engineer at China Railway First Survey and Design Institute, the project’s prime designer.
Running through the rugged Qinling mountains, it is expected to carry some 70 million passengers a year once it is finished in four years, Xinhua news agency reports.ome 135 kilometers of the line will cut through the craggy region, requiring the boring of 127 kilometers of tunnels.
China already has the world’s longest high-speed rail network and aims to double its length to 16,000 kilometers by 2020. (ANI)
