New high-speed rail starts operation

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A bullet train on its trial trip enters the Hangzhou East Station in Hangzhou City, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, June 30, 2013. A new high-speed railway that stretches across east China's Yangtze River Delta went into commercial service on July 1. The Nanjing-Hangzhou-Ningbo high-speed railway, with a designated top speed of 350 km per hour, will cut travel time between Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, and the port city of Ningbo in east China's Zhejiang Province to about two hours. High-speed trains will run at a speed of 300 km per hour during the initial operation period. (Xinhua/Tan Jin)

2013-07-01 08:05China DailyWeb Editor: qindexing

Line connecting Nanjing to Ningbo greatly shortens travel time in region

The opening of a new high-speed train line linking Nanjing, Jiangsu province, with Ningbo, Zhejiang's only deepwater port, will not only make the integration of the Yangtze River Delta region a possibility, but almost a certainty.

The new high-speed rail line passing through Hangzhou, Zhejiang's provincial capital, will commence operations on Monday.

It is the latest leg of a high-speed rail network of eight lines that cross the industrial heartland of East China.

One of the richest regions in the country, the Yangtze River Delta region, with a total area of 99,600 square kilometers spanning two provinces plus Shanghai, has a combined population of 75 million people.

The cities and industrial pockets in the region are linked by the Yangtze River and its many tributaries.

Efforts to better integrate the region with Shanghai as its center have gained a major boost with the completion of the high-speed rail network that will greatly shorten travel time between cities.

Formerly, it took more than five hours to go from Nanjing to Ningbo, but the high-speed rail line will reduce that time to about two hours.

Providing a faster connection between cities in the region has been a long-term project. According to statistics provided by the Shanghai Railway Administration for the first four months of this year, the Shanghai-Ningbo high-speed railway averaged 210,000 passengers a day, the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed train had 100,000 daily passengers, the Zhejiang coastal high-speed train averaged more than 70,000 passengers daily and the Hefei-Bengbu route was used daily by 13,000 passengers.

Shanghai's role as a transportation center is evident in the scale of its road and rail network, which reached 7,800 km by the end of last year, 1,800 km of which are high-speed rail lines. It is expected the total length of the high-speed rail lines will reach 3,200 km by the end of 2015, all of which are up to international standards.

A close connection between the cities can be seen more intensely in the Hongqiao transportation hub. Located in the western part of the city, the hub connects the airport, high-speed railway and the city's major metro lines, allowing people to transfer between cities with little effort.

A train conductor whistles for passengers to board during a trial run of a high-speed train linking Ningbo and Hangzhou on June 26. Su Yang/China News Service


Real estate developers have seen profits to be made near the Hongqiao hub with its large flow of passengers every day.

Renowned for its rejuvenation of Xintiandi in downtown Shanghai, which was a worn down residential community, the Hong Kong-based Shui On Group is now building an urban complex called The Hub in Hongqiao, scheduled to be completed in 2014.

Vincent Lo, chairman of Shui On Group, said, "There are sure to be small urban circles mushrooming around such mega-cities as Shanghai, which will fundamentally change the planning and construction of the urban transportation infrastructure."

Bryan Chan, project director of The Hub, compared the high-speed train network in China to the construction of the US highway system that started in the 1950s. Cities throughout the United States are now connected by this system.

"A similar revolution is now taking place in China with the help of the high-speed train. Once realized, 25 million people will be able to live in an economic circle where they can reach each other's cities within an hour. This cannot be compared to any other place in the world," said Chan at the Urban Land Institute's forum on high-speed railway and urban development held in Shanghai in early June.

"It is like a set rule applicable all over the world. But it is certain Hongqiao enjoys convenient transportation seen nowhere else. It is certain that Hongqiao will exert great influence over the regional economy," said Xue Quanrong, executive deputy director of the Shanghai Hongqiao CBD Administrative Committee.

With the high-speed railway, urban planning can look farther to neighboring Nanjing, Hangzhou and Hefei, said Zhou Hongyun, chief engineer and executive deputy director of the Shanghai Railway Administration.

"In this sense, Shanghai's development strategy can be expanded to a wider neighboring 35 sq km. A new economic development industry cluster will come into being in this way," Zhou said.

"With the operation of the high-speed train, it is now possible for cosmopolitan cities and smaller cities to share resources with each other. The functions of different cities will be redefined and the layout of industries will possibly be restructured," he added.

However, careful study and planning should take place in advance to seek economic benefits from the high-speed trains, experts say.

Wang Lan, an associate professor in the Department of Urban Planning at Tongji University, started to study 22 cities along the high speed train line in 2006.

Over time, only six of the 22 monitored cities have centered their urban planning around high-speed railway stations, thus seeking economic benefits from the high-speed train, Wang and her research team discovered.

In addition, only half of the 22 cities have located their high-speed train stations near the cities' new districts, while the rest are in remote areas at least 20 km away, requiring a 30-minute drive from the downtown area.

Liu Hung Chih, principal and senior vice-president of Design + Planning/Economics for Pan-Asia AECOM, a global provider of technical and management support services, said it is a challenge in China to associate regional plans with the central government's plans.

"As for the problem that 50 percent of the high-speed train stations are set up in remote areas, one solution is to set up new city centers around these stations. In these new centers, it is possible to build new exhibition centers and public utility centers," Liu said.

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Long-distance relationships come a little bit closer

2013-07-01 09:40

China DailyWeb Editor: Wang Fan

Su Miaoquan has already planned his longest vacation of the year, the National Day Holidays that fall in the first week of October - three days will be spent visiting his parents back home in Wenzhou, two days shopping with his girlfriend in Shanghai and two days getting together with friends in Nanjing.

"Thanks to the upcoming Nanjing-Hangzhou-Ningbo high-speed railway, I've got everything arranged," said the 28-year-old, who was born in Zhejiang's Wenzhou and took a job in Jiangsu's provincial capital of Nanjing.

A new high-speed railway that stretches across East China's Yangtze River Delta will cut the travel time between Nanjing to Hangzhou from four hours to about 70 minutes starting from July 1.

Shanghai used to be a forced stop between the two cities if traveling by train, but the new line avoids that extra 200 kilometers and opts for a more direct route.

With the launch of the new line, Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, the three most important cities in Yangtze River Delta, are now about an hour away from each other by train.

"It forms the shape of a triangle if you connect the three cities on the map. Unfortunately, the Nanjing-Hangzhou side of the triangle is rather weak, whether in terms of aggregate economic volume, size and number of cities on the way or the levels of those cities' industrial structure," said Yu Hongsheng, director of the Urban Development Research Center from Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Connecting Nanjing and Hangzhou directly by train makes that side the focus of the Yangtze River Delta's future development, according to Yu.

"The new rail's Hangzhou-Ningbo part will also cut that trip to 53 minutes and that makes my total journey back home (from Nanjing to Wenzhou) less than four-and-a-half hours - it used to be 17 hours," said Su.

The new Hangzhou-Ningbo rail helps the original high-speed route stretch further southward to several important economic hubs in the region such as Wenzhou and Xiamen in Fujian.

Su started his "tale of two cities" 10 years ago when he was admitted to a university in Nanjing.

"No high-speed train was available before 2008, the 10-hour-long bumpy bus was the only option if you didn't want to spend most of a day - 17 hours - on the slow train," he said. "Seven-and-a-half hours was the best record for the high-speed (train, which passed through Shanghai) before the new railway went into operation."

Su didn't become a train buff until recently, not only because the opening of the Nanjing-Hangzhou-Ningbo line saves his time traveling back home, but also due to the role the high-speed train plays in his long-distance relationship.

"My girlfriend was just transferred to Shanghai for six months training for her new job, and you have to admit the less-than-one-hour high-speed train traveling between Shanghai and Nanjing makes my life easier," he said, adding most of his weekends were spent in Shanghai rather than Nanjing.

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this map may help people here understand how the high speed rail system connects the Yangtze river delta cities.

the triangle shown on google map, it's about 300km from Nanjing to Shanghai or to Hangzhou, while the distance between Shanghai and Hangzhou is about 200km.