On 16 January 2010, the Ministry of Railways started construction of the High Speed Train from Chengdu to Kunming. This railway is an important transport line for southwestern China. It’s the most difficult railway project in China because the railway’s safety is often threatened by debris flows. A prevention system is being developed to monitor the debris flows.
It will take 5 to 6 years to finish the whole line. When everything is ready, it will only take 4 hours to travel from Chengdu to Kunming and afterwards it will be connected with the Southeast Asia train line.
The part from Chengdu to Emei Mountain will be finished in 2013 and it will only take 30 minutes to travel between those 2 places.
I love China and its government. My wife is from Chengdu and has relatives in Kunming. It will be so convenient to visit them… I dislike to use air travel and look forward to a time when all travelling in China can be conveniently done by train. I hope in the future high-speed railway in China can absorb most of the business and leisure travelling between major cities. However, I hope the conventional railway network will also be expanded and modernized (for example electrified or double-tracked), as smaller cities in China also benefit to be connected to the railway network.
I think the railway development in China is without parallel in human history. I will keep my fingers crossed and hope that it will be a permanent feature of Chinese transport policy.
I think in the future China will be admired for the massive investment it made into railway capacity expansion. As a Swiss citizen living in China, I am especially happy to see China promote railways, since my country of origin has a long love tradition of promoting railway transportation and has established one of the densest and most efficient railway networks in the world (if China continues with its present pace of railway infrastructure development China may some day in the future overtake Switzerland on a per capita or a per land unit basis, but this needs still lots of time…)
Thanks for the feedback, the Chinese trains are indeed speeding up really quick!
Kind regards,
Dieter Vanonckelen
Marketing Manager Maxxelli.