Overview[]
Chinese high speed trains are extremely fast: they are able to travel up to 200 to 245 KM/H or 124 to 155 MPH.
China has built the world's largest chain of high speed rails. They use the trains to quickly transport their citizens and visitors. China not only uses their rails to transport goods and people, but they use them to connect economies and major centers of business. As they start to offer their rail services to other countries, the more economies they will connect. This will greatly help every economy connected by these rails.
China plans to make economical connections with other countries through the high speed rain routes. They will fund infrastructure projects, like the railroad and building of ports, in exchange for trade deals with less developed nations. China needs new trade deals in order to continue growth and keep stimulating their economy. It is the start of a system of interconnection throughout Eurasia.
The high speed rail system also provides a great benefit to the citizens in China. For example, they can get easy access to lower cost living areas outside major cities, such as Shanghai or Beijing.
China plans to connect all of their province capitals with high speed rail, as well as upgrading existing rail lines. The amount of people riding high speed rail is a world record of 1.5 billion riders a year.
High speed trains were originally developed in Germany in 1899 with 45 miles of electric railroads. Recently, 20 years ago, the high speed train was introduced to China. Now China has about 12,000 miles of railroads, as of 2016. China has become one of the most progressive in the technology for high speed trains. In the year of 2003, thirteen years after China's first high speed train had developed with the top speed of 124 mph. The next year, the Shanghai Maglev train was developed in China with German engineering help with the top speed 246 mph.
With this new innovation in China, there will be a "domino" effect with other countries as well. With the much more efficient train system, more countries will look to them for new rail systems. This may in fact cause a new shift in transportation as well. This will get people places faster and will not cost as much to ride either, causing more and more people to ride them.
In 1993 China's trains average the speed of 30 mph and quickly and steadily lost money to other transports like airplanes and ferries. After five rounds of speed up campaigns in 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2004 China was able to upgrade its mass of railroad tracks and was able to get a train that is able to reach speeds of 100 mph.
Types of high Speed Trains[]
Type: G-Train
Speed: 400-250km/h
Uses: For major, populated cities
Type: D-Train
Speed: 250-200km/h
Uses: Used in intermediate cities. It runs day and night.
Type: C-Train
Speed: 200km/h and below
Uses: For neighboring cities. It saves time and money.
Environmental Impact[]
Although high speed train provides many benefits, they in fact also harm the environment. High speed train energy use and greenhouse gas emissions harm the environment. High speed train can directly affect the environment by operation of the vehicle, however the use of the vehicle does not cause most of the emissions. Most emissions are caused by indirect sources such as the building of infrastructure, producing the fuel, manufacturing of the vehicles, maintaining the system and disposing of materials. Such indirect factors never reflect the true cost to the environment to run a machine as such. High speed train can also help the environment if used correctly. The highest environmental impact occurs when there is low ridership. If the ridership is always high and constant the high speed train may decrease greenhouse emissions, however only over a long period of time. To truly reduce greenhouse emissions from high speed trains it takes a combination of high ridership, green energy, and minimizing the use of polluting material. High speed rail is providing a increasing sustainable alternative to airplanes. Airplanes use much more fuel than high speed trains do. Also, the trains can be faster than airplanes in shorter distance travels. Once they become more common, high speed rail can be expected to blow up. Environmental impacts are much lower than airplanes in the long run and has many parks to it.
China’s unprecedented development ambitions along the new Silk Roads came with both environmental concerns and opportunities in tow. The 2015 Action Plan states that “efforts should be made to promote green and low-carbon infrastructure construction and operation management, taking into full account the impact of climate change on the construction.”
Furthermore, a 2016 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences report highlighted BRI as an opportunity for China to help developing countries improve their environmental institutional capacity, and called on China to carry out environmental impact assessments at the policy, strategy, and planning phases. These phases could be used to fix any detrimental impacts to the environment whilst it was still being built.
Work cited[]
Chester, Mikhail, and Arpad Horvath. "Life-Cycle Environmental Assessment of California High Speed Rail." ACCESS Magazine. N.p., Fall 2010. Web. 24 May 2017. <http://www.accessmagazine.org/fall- 2010/life-cycle-environmental-assessment-california-high-speed-rail/>.-https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/transportation/china-bullet-train.htm