Chinese bullet train breaks 302 mph; breaks speed record
Another day, another accolade for China's high-speed rail system.
The Chinese CRH308A "Harmony" bullet train broke 302 miles per hour -- 486.1 km/h, or the speed of a Bombardier Learjet 40XR cruising at low speed -- on a run on a pilot segment between Zaozhuang to Bengbu on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, according to a Xinhua report on Friday.
The translation's a little muddy, but the 1,318 km line -- that's almost 820 miles -- promises to reduce the travel time from Beijing to Shangai from 10 hours to four or five hours.
(While that's wonderful, consider that it's a tiny minority of China's total rail network, and that while speed records are a nice publicity coup, the real challenge is elevating the service for its not-so-fast regional trains.)
The high-speed line is scheduled to open "before the end of 2011," according to the (roughly translated) report.
To date, China has laid some 4,680 miles of high-speed track, with aims to built out its entire rail network to 74,565 miles of track by 2020, 9,941 miles of which would be high-speed.
The goal: serve 90 percent of China's population by train, somehow.
Related on SmartPlanet:
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- Where should rejected high-speed rail funds go?
- Study: two-thirds of travelers will use high-speed rail
- U.S. announces $2.4 billion for high-speed rail in 23 states
- Amtrak's high-speed rail vision for 2040: New York to Washington in 96 minutes
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com