China Debuts the World's Fastest Train 491
An anonymous reader writes "China unveiled their new high speed train that clocks in at an average of 217 mph. China's new rail service travels through 20 cities along its route, connecting central China and less developed regions to the larger and more industrial Pearl River Delhi. Seimens, Bombardier and Alstom worked together to design and build this feat of modern transportation, which topped out at a whopping 245mph (394km/h) during trial runs earlier in December."
mph ?q (Score:1, Informative)
Pearl River Delta?? (Score:5, Informative)
Siemens, not Seimens... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:245mph max speed? Not so impressive (Score:5, Informative)
Re:245mph max speed? Not so impressive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:245mph max speed? Not so impressive (Score:2, Informative)
I was about to accuse you of being a NASA employee, but it appears you are right.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/03/fastest_train_attempt/ [theregister.co.uk]
I think this means the fastest regular timetabled train service rather than the fastest a train has ever travelled, because quite a few trains have broken the 400 km/h barrier in test runs.
Re:How hard is it to have something like this in U (Score:3, Informative)
How "hard" is it is mainly a matter of spending money and ramming through the environmental permits, eminent domain seizures, and other such hurdles. China spent $20 billion on this, probably more like $30 billion at purchasing-power parity, and they also have a much larger supply of cheap labor (even cheap semi-skilled labor), and when the central government wants something done, bureaucratic hassles magically disappear.
Although they did also put it mainly on flat land. Some of our most promising city pairs with high traffic and strong local support for such a project are unfortunately in or separated by mountainous areas: LA-SF, Seattle-Portland, Atlanta-DC, etc.
We do have flat areas, like Chicago-Detroit and Chicago-StLouis, but they don't have quite that volume of travel, and no strong push.
Texas is occasionally actually seen as the best bet, with Dallas-Houston-Austin-San Antonio all fairly close (distances where rail is competitive over air) and separated by fairly flat land. However, Southwest has spent a lot of lobbying effort killing any attempts to put something like that in, since they do a lot of short-hop business out of their original Dallas hub.
56 trains a day (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a better version of the story. [ft.com] This is a big deal. They're running 56 trains a day on that route. They're also the longest high speed trains running. So this is a high-volume people mover. Plans call for another 11,000 Km of high speed rail by 2012. That's only two years away.
Some of this is a consequence of the financial troubles and low interest rates in the US. The government of China had been putting excess cash into U.S. Treasury bills, but about a year ago they stopped buying more US debt and started spending on infrastructure and resources. China has been buying up mines and farms around the world to secure supplies of raw materials and food, while beefing up their infrastructure at home.
Re:How hard is it to have something like this in U (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How hard is it to have something like this in U (Score:4, Informative)
Amtrak has the problem that it leases the use of many of the rails it uses. As a result, passenger trains have to yield to the trains of the owners of the rail - usually slow, long freight trains. Even worse, the freight trains aren't a fixed schedule, so Amtrak can't schedule around the delays.
One fix would be to install new (standard speed0 rails alongside the existing ones. It would be fairly cheap (as compared to high speed rail) and would allow Amtrak to travel at high speeds for more of their routes.
Of course, even better would be a nationwide network of high speed rail, but I don't believe that there's enough pressure from airline-fed-up consumers and environmentalists yet to encourage the politicians to do anything.
Re:245mph max speed? Not so impressive (Score:2, Informative)
That said, the TGV is way older (research started in the sixties, first commercial run in 1981) and had time to be debugged to death. I wouldn't put my ass in that Chinese train before a few years.
Re:China A Developing Country? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:China A Developing Country? (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, 90%+ of their population are dirt farmers. Have you ever been to China? In a vast majority of the country it's literally like stepping back in time to the dark ages.
Re:Nice (Score:5, Informative)
Or they use this amazing concept known as express and local trains. The express train stops in only a few places which you use the much slower local train to get to.
There were a lot of errors (Score:1, Informative)
It should obviously be Pearl River Delta [wikipedia.org]... But TFA had it wrong too, not just the submitter. Also, article has "Seimens" when there should be "Siemens"...
TFA also claims that it averages 217 mph (350 km/h) but claims that the total distance of 663 miles will only take 2h45min, which would average 241 mph...
Re:How hard is it to have something like this in U (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with Kelo was that private property was taken for the benefit of developers. The decision flew in the face of the takings clause of the 5th amendment.
Gads, I wish that I had my mod points (Score:1, Informative)
What countries's companies are allow to deal with the like of Iraq's Saddam Hussein? Germany, France (their gov. QUIETLY overlooked the dealings) and China (openly dealing with him).
What country just QUIETLY shut down one of the major plants in Zimbabwe? Nestle. From Switzerland.
What countries have major dealing in Somalia? France, Germany, Russia, and China.
What countries have major dealings in Burma? France, Germany, Russia, China, and North Korea.
What countries have major dealings in North Korea? China, France, and Germany.
What countries have major dealings with Iran? China, Russia, France, and Germany.
Now, what country does NOT have ANY major dealings with these criminal nations? America. There are a few companies still in involved with Iran, but only on very small scale.
Right now, America has a FAR FAR better record of avoiding terrorists and rogue nations since 1976 than does EU. Prior to '76, yeah, we messed with these nations. JUST LIKE EU.
But starting with Jimmy Carter, we cleaned up our mess.
Now, if you want to talk about CHina, China DOES export more to the USA than it does to any other nation. OTH, more than half of America's export to China is natural resources including coal and oil. That is stupid, but it is not a crime.
If you want to fucking grip about a nation, at least have your GD facts right.
Re:Pearl River Delta?? (Score:2, Informative)
a sad irony that Japan, a tiny country with little land mass has the world's fastest trains, while the US and its huge land mass seemingly has the world's slowest.
Think about what you just wrote. Carefully.
Re:245mph max speed? Not so impressive (Score:1, Informative)
No, part of them is built by Siemens (or built in China based on the Siemens design with Siemens components)...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Railways_CRH3
Re:Pearl River Delta?? (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, you do not seem to realise that Japan and China are quite distinct entities, smartass.
Re:Fuel efficiency of this train vs airplane? (Score:2, Informative)
Brad Templeton says it better than I can: http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html [templetons.com]
I'm no more into knocking mass transit than he ... was ... but I can no more help manipulating numbers than I can help breathing, and the numbers show that mass transit works well where you have heavy population density, which most of the USA does not. It works even better when you have low to moderate income and low car ownership, which most of China still has.
And since you don't ask, no, I'm not hoping to impoverish the USA so that mass transit becomes the optimal choice. It'll happen anyway.
A few details (Score:5, Informative)
Someone in my family works for Siemens as a senior member of the China High-Speed Rail project (not to be confused with the China Maglev project, for which Siemens is also a partner). We've talked about it quite often - and fairly extensively yesterday. Here are a few details:
The technologies of all four major high-speed rail system in the world - Germany's ICE, Japan's Sinkansen, France's TGV and Canada's Bombardier (in order of overall technological advancement) - have come together in China, though rather reluctantly. When the Chinese started the project years ago, they did something very clever: Instead of picking one of the four systems (which is what people normally do), they gave all four a pilot contract each. The one showing the best result in its pilot would then be chosen as the main partner, they said, making all four competing like crazy - routinely investing more resources than they've originally planed. The Chinese are not concerned about significant waste due to incompatibility between the pilot products, since all four are building to the specs written by the Chinese.
Now, years later, the Canadians and the French are practically washed out, even though some of their technologies have contributed to the new Chinese system. The Germans and the Japanese remain - as initially expected - the main competitors - or, reluctant partners for the Chinese. The vast majority of heavy lifting on the technological front is done by the Germans (which was also expected, since even the Japanese system was originally based on German designs), but the Japanese have the advantage that their pilot has started earlier (the Chinese intentionally delayed the German pilot in order to ransom a below-value price).
The record speed, for example, was achieved using two joined trains - of four sections each - built by Siemens in Germany and put together in China. Those are the only two German trains current available for this route. All the other trains are Japanese, and they're what people see on most new footages. But the top speed the Japanese trains (on the same route) can reach are significantly lower - about 350 km/h, or >10% less than the German record. Plus, while the German rains got to 395 km/h in standard configuration - with two tracking (active) and two tracked (passive) sections in each train - the Japanese had to cheat - using three tracking and only one tracked section in each train - in order to reach their 350 km/h.
As someone has mentioned above, there exist a TGV speed record that's much higher still, but that's a record nobody in the industry takes seriously, because it was achieved with a totally crazy, not nearly practical configuration of train sections. It's a fake number, period.
The bottom line is, for the original cost of one project, China has managed to get more than twice the amount worth of know-how (all legally via proper technology transfer contracts), and is now itself among the leading players of the industry. For the upcoming US high-speed rail system, the Chinese has offered a bid with a price tag 1/3 lower than anybody else...
Re:A few details (Score:2, Informative)
The Chinese are planning to run 56 trains a day. In comparison, Shinkansen's Tokaido line has 305 trains per day. Moreover, according to JR Tokai's presentation [ecotransport.jp] (it's in Japanese but you should be able to make out the figures on p.19), they already had 60 trains per day when they started operating in 1964. (It should be said that the Chinese have a more difficult task than the original Shinkansen since the trains are traveling much faster, but then again, Shinkansen is 45 years old.)
The Chinese will eventually approach this sort of density, I'm sure, but right now their traffic density is nowhere near world class.
Re:A few details (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, in day-to-day operations, German's ICE and Japan's Sinkansen often go beyond 300 km/h. Frace's TGV never does, and Canada's Bombaardier doesn't even work well above 200 km/h.
France's LGV Est (this is the line that the 574km/h world speed record was set) has a standard operating speed of 320 km/h. There is no line in Germany capable of speeds over 300km/h (but German ICE trains do operate on LGV Est at 320km/h).
Also, Bombardier isn't the name of a train network in the sense of ICE, TGV, or Shinkansen. Bombardier is a train manufacturing company like Alstom, Siemens, or Hitachi. Canada's passenger rail network is known as VIA and for the most part it isn't regarded as high-speed, though they do use tilting train technology on the densely populated "corridor" between Windsor, ON and Quebec City, QC. This corridor line does boast higher average speeds than on any current passenger rail line in the US.
Re:Pearl River Delta?? (Score:4, Informative)
Now, I like decent mass transit, but come on, let's be realistic here. For intracity transit, you're not using high-speed rail anyway. People generally avoid it because, even during rush hour when an 11-mile trip takes 25-30 minutes by car, using the light rail system will be 50-60 minutes. (Actual numbers from an actual commute!). Only in places with truly miserable traffic does mass transit - even the most effective mass transit - begin to become competitive.
Actually, for cities that are 100 - 300 miles apart the train is quicker.
Flying that sort of distance might only take 45 minutes, but there is so much pissing about at either end it ends up taking loads longer. Over here you have to check in an hour early to go through security, then it takes them 30-40 minutes to get the bags out and send them round the conveyor when you land. That makes it close to 3 hours. As for driving, most places have speed limits of 70Mph so that averages to more like 60 and a 200 mile journey still takes close to 3 hours too.
Every week I used to take a train 200 Miles on Friday and it it does city center to city center in just under 2 hours, with no pissing about at either end. I can buy the ticket on the web, carry all my bags on with me, then get off and go straight out of the station. This is a shit British train which can only go at about 125Mph, but it almost never hits traffic as it can be controlled centrally so actually stays close to that. Imagine how quick one of these Chinese bad boys could do the same journey?
Once you get above 300 miles like some cities in the states then things are different but for a lot of journeys on the same coast trains could save a lot of time. Train is never going to replace the airplane for speed on longer journeys, but on short ones it can be loads quicker. It also saves having to do 4 hour drives which suck if you have been working 8 hours before hand.
Re:A few details (Score:1, Informative)
Re:China A Developing Country? (Score:3, Informative)
It's nowhere near 90%. Maybe 60%. I think you are thinking of Laos...
Anyway, even in the cities, where people live pretty well, the median income (not mean, but median) is still about 500 to 1000 RMB / month (location dependent). 4k to 7k a year.
You can live OK on that, but middle class people don't aspire to own Mercedes, and make do with a Toyota sedan. They aspire to own a QQ car (a $5,000 Chinese compact), and make do with a scooter.