China on Saturday unveiled what it billed as the fastest rail link in the world — a train connecting the modern cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 350 kilometres (217 miles) an hour. The super-high-speed train reduces the 1,069 kilometre journey to a three hour ride and cuts the previous journey time by more than seven and a half hours, the official Xinhua news agency said. Work on the project began in 2005 as part of plans to expand a high-speed network aimed at eventually linking Guangzhou, a business hub in southern China near Hong Kong, with the capital Beijing, Xinhua added. ‘The train can go 394.2 kilometres per hour, it’s the fastest train in operation in the world,’ Zhang Shuguang, head of the transport bureau at the railways ministry, told Xinhua. Test runs for the service began earlier in December and the link officially went into service when the first scheduled train left the eastern metropolis of Wuhan on Saturday. By comparison, the average for high-speed trains in Japan was 243 kilometres per hour while in France it was 277 kilometres per hour, said Xu Fangliang, general engineer in charge […]
Sunday, December 27th, 2009
China Unveils ‘World’s Fastest Train Link’
Author:
Source: Agence France-Presse (France)
Publication Date: Dec 26 01:53 AM US/Eastern
Link: China Unveils ‘World’s Fastest Train Link’
Source: Agence France-Presse (France)
Publication Date: Dec 26 01:53 AM US/Eastern
Link: China Unveils ‘World’s Fastest Train Link’
Stephan: Anybody who travels outside the U.S. knows that when it comes to trains we are at best a developing country. Amtrak's average train speed in the U.S. is 48 mph. And we are actually getting slower, and have been for decades. There are still people alive today who remember that in 1934 the Burlington Zephyr, a regularly scheduled trip between Denver and Chicago, averaged 77.6 mph over its 1015 mile run. In 1949 the American average was just under 60 mph. It is pathetic, and the result of a deliberate multi-decade policy to favor road and air travel because those special interests controlled the Congress during that period.
As a country, because of our obsession that only profit can be considered the defining priority, we seem incapable of developing long range social policies that improve our quality of life. And because money is the only consideration in our political process, our democracy has become fundamentally degraded, whether it is trains or health care, to the point where we pursue self-destructive policies to our own detriment.
