World's Fastest Train Journey Begins Operation

The Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway with the world's fastest train journey started operation Saturday. The passenger train is expected to reach an average speed of up to 350-km-per-hour.

Shuang Feng has the details.

Two passenger trains rolled out of the Wuhan Railway Station and Guangzhou North Railway Station Saturday morning and reached each others' terminals within three hours, compared with the previous 10 and a half hours over the nearly 1100 km journey.

More than 500 passengers experienced this new and greatly accelerated train ride. All of them excitedly expressed that the bullet trains are much more convenient and unbelievablely fast.

"We feel really comfortable riding the train as if the train wasn't really moving at all. However, we do realize that the train is running at a very high speed. And inside the carriage, it isn't noisy at all. As opposed to normal train carriages, here we can speak normally and hear each other."

In 2004, China hailed the completion of the rail line from Guangzhou to Shenzhen, both in Guangdong Province, with a speed of 160 km per hour. Now, the speed has more than doubled.

The service between Wuhan, a metropolis in central China, and Guangzhou City, a business hub in the southern Guangdong Province, was put into trial operation on Dec. 9, reaching a maximum speed of more than 394 km per hour.

Wang Zhijian, chief economist of China Electrification Engineering Group, says technological security is important in ensuring this high-speed railway runs safely at such high speeds.

He says measures have been taken to ensure the train's efficiency and there is no need to question safety standards.

"We can assure the train's security. It can detect abnormal conditions within a distance of 30 kilometers and will activate the safety shut-down if necessary. And there is no possibility of one train hitting the other from behind."

The launch of China's longest high-speed train link between Wuhan and Guangzhou will help ease the traffic tensions in southern and eastern China, especially during the Spring Festival travel rush.

However, the competition between airlines and rail operators will continue to heat up.

Because of the shortened traffic time as well as the cheaper price, more and more people prefer the train as a more favorable method of transportation.

To deal with this threat, most of China Airlines companies have unveiled several counter measures, including cutting ticket prices and canceling some of their short-distance flights.

Zhang Jiuzhen is the spokesman of China Southern Airlines.

"Of course, railways have great influence over the airlines. I think the launch of the high-speed railway itself has been an overturn in railway development. Since the launch of the Shanghai high-speed railway this April, the passenger flow volume has been reduced by nearly 30%. And the effect will be greater in the future."

China plans to have high-speed rail services running between 70 percent of its key cities by 2020, which would cover more than 80 percent of the airline network.

About 16,000 km of railway for high-speed trains will be built on the mainland in the next 10 years, according to a blueprint by the Ministry of Railways.

Shuang Feng, CRI news.