China's high-speed railway network is by far the longest in the world. As of December 2022, it extends to 31 of the country's 33 provincial-level administrative divisions and exceeds in total length, accounting for about two-thirds of the world's high-speed rail tracks in commercial service. Over the past decade, China’s high-speed rail network grew rapidly according to ambitious railway plans issued by the State. The "Mid- to Long-Term Railway Network Plan" ("Railway Network Plan") approved by the State Council in 2004 called for of passenger-dedicated HSR lines running train at speeds of at least by 2020. The 2008 Revisions to the Railway Network Plan increased the year 2020 passenger-dedicated HSR network target length to and removed the 200 km/h speed standard to allow new lines to be built to standards that can accommodate faster trains.
Overview.
In 2008, the Ministry of Railways announced plans to build of high-speed railways with trains reaching normal speeds of 350 km/h. China invested $50 billion on its high-speed rail system in 2009 and the total construction cost of the high-speed rail system is $300 billion. The main operator of regular high-speed train services is China Railway High-Speed (CRH).
China's conventional high-speed railway network is made up of four components:
National High Speed Rail Grid.
"Four Vertical and Four Horizontal" network.
The centerpiece of the MOR's expansion into high-speed rail is a national high-speed rail grid that is overlaid onto the existing railway network. The 2004 Railway Network Plan called for four lines running north-south (verticals) and four lines running east-west (horizontals) by the year 2020 that would connect population centers in economically developed regions of the country. The 2008 Revisions to the Railway Network Plan extended the length of the Beijing-Shenzhen HSR to Hong Kong and the Shanghai-Changsha HSR to Kunming. Each line in the 4+4 national HSR grid is over 1,400 km in length, except the Qingdao-Taiyuan Line which is 873 km in length. Apart from the Hangzhou–Shenzhen HSR (Ningbo-Shenzhen section) and Shanghai–Chengdu HSR (Nanjing-Chengdu section), which were the first railways to connect those cities and carry both passenger and freight, the other six lines are all passenger-dedicated lines. With the exception of the Yichang-Chengdu section of the Shanghai-Chengdu HSR with speed limits of , all other lines in the 4+4 national grid were built to accommodate trains at speeds of .
With the completion of the Beijing–Shenyang high-speed railway, this backbone network was fully completed in January 2021.
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"Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal" network.
In 2016, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced the plans to extend the almost completed "Four Vertical and Four Horizontal" network to a new "Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal" network. The new network comprises eight north-south ("vertical") corridors and eight east-west ("horizontal") ones, almost doubling the route length.
A corridor may consist of two or more parallel lines that take different routes between the same cities, branch and connector lines, and in some cases, connecting lines and lower-speed lines. The Beijing-Shanghai HSR corridor, one of the verticals, comprises the preexisting Beijing-Shanghai HSR, which runs through Tianjin, Jinan, Bengbu, Nanjing, Wuxi and Suzhou, as well as a new high-speed passenger dedicated line from Beijing to Shanghai via Tianjin, Dongying, Weifang, Linyi, Huaian, Yangzhou, and Nantong, as well as HSRs connecting Nanjing, Hefei and Shanghai with Hangzhou. Some corridors consist of a single HSR line; the Shanghai-Kunming HSR corridor, one of the horizontals, is essentially the Shanghai–Kunming High-Speed Railway by another name.
The national HSR mainlines in the 8+8 corridor grid are generally electrified, double-tracked, passenger-dedicated HSR lines built to accommodate train speeds of 250–350 km/h, but corridors also make use of intercity and regional HSR lines with speeds of 200 km/h as well as certain regular speed railways. The Qingdao-Yinchuan corridor includes the Taiyuan–Zhongwei–Yinchuan Railway, which is partially single-track with speeds of only 160km/h.
Other Regional high-speed rail lines.
Regional high-speed rail lines connect major cities and national HSR lines and are built to accommodate train speeds of up to . According to the "Mid-to-Long Term Railway Network Plan" (revised in 2008), the MOR plans to build over of railway in order to expand the railway network in western China and to fill gaps in the networks of eastern and central China. The 2008 Revisions to Railway Network Plan listed regional railways in Jiangxi, Sichuan and the Northeast. The 2016 Revision lays out 10 new regional railways in eastern China, four in the Northeast, seven in central China, and five in western China. These are also considered high-speed rail though they are not part of the national HSR grid or Intercity High Speed Rail. However several HSR lines planned and built as a regional high-speed railway under the 2008 Revisions have since been incorporated into the 8+8 national grid.
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High-speed intercity railways.
Intercity lines with speeds ranging from are designed to provide regional high-speed rail service between large cities and metropolitan areas that are generally within the same province. They are built with the approval of the central government but are financed and operated largely by local governments with limited investment and oversight from the China Rail Corporation. Some intercity lines run parallel to national grid high-speed rail lines but serve more stations along the route.
The 2004 Railway Network Plan arranged for intercity lines around the Bohai Rim, Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas. The 2008 Revision to the Railway Network Plan designated Changsha, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi'an and coastal Fujian metropolitan areas for intercity rail development. The 2016 Revision to the Railway Network Plan identifies the Shandong Peninsula, coastal Guangxi, Harbin-Changchun, southern Liaoning, central Yunnan, central Guizhou, the northern slopes of Tian Shan, Yinchuan, Hohhot-Baotou-Ordos-Yulin as additional metro regions for intercity rail.
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Class I national railways.
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References.
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Works cited.
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