The speed on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway was increased to 350 km/h on September 21, making it again among the world’s fastest train services after the operational limit was reduced six years ago.
Fourteen of the Fuxing bullet trains now run at 350 km/h on the 1,318-km rail line linking China’s two biggest cities, China Railway Corp said. Other trains on the line remain at 300 km/h.
The new service cuts travel time to 4 hours, 28 minutes from roughly five hours, while ticket prices remain unchanged, CRC said.
“These trains are so popular that the tickets for today’s trains sold out a week ago,” said Huang Xin, director of operations for China Railway Corp.
CRC said the resumption of 350 km/h service is possible thanks to “prominent progress in technology innovation”. The service was launched to “meet passengers’ anticipation for shorter travel times and improve the service of China’s high-speed railway network”.
The Fuxing is also fitted with more than 2,500 sensors to collect some 1,500 types of real-time data needed to run such a train, 500 more elements than the previous bullet train models. To reduce fatalities and damage to carriages in accidents, it also is designed with more advanced shock and crash energy absorption equipment, he added.
Due to to safety and cost concerns, in July and August 2011, China lowered the speed of high-speed trains to 300 km/h on five railway lines: Wuhan-Guangzhou, Zhengzhou-Xi’an, Shanghai-Nanjing, Beijing-Tianjin and Shanghai-Hangzhou.
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