Another power failure halts high-speed trains
By Lydia Chen |
July 26, 2011, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A POWER failure delayed more than 20 trains on the Shanghai-Beijing railway yesterday afternoon, only hours after traffic resumed on the section where a train crash killed 39 people and left nearly 200 injured in Zhejiang Province.
The power failure at 5:30pm on a section near Dingyuan County in the eastern province of Anhui brought more than 20 trains to a three-hour standstill before they started moving again at 8:35pm, a spokesman for the Shanghai Railway Bureau told the Xinhua news agency.
A piece of iron sheeting blown by heavy winds onto the electricity line was the cause of the power failure, according to a short statement by railway authorities.
More than 6,000 passengers were affected.
The delayed trains began to arrive at Shanghai's Hongqiao terminal at around 11pm. Shanghai traffic authorities prolonged the running hours of Metro Line 2 till after midnight while more shuttle buses and taxis were brought into service to help passengers get home.
Authorities apologized for the delays but that didn't satisfy many of the passengers, many of whom had to suffer in the heat of carriages where the air conditioning couldn't operate.
"The high-speed railway is even worse than a piece of decayed iron," a man said in a 52-second video posted on Sina.com by a passenger on the G20, one of the affected trains.
In the video, almost everyone in the blacked-out carriage held a fan in their hand, trying to cool themselves while some men took off their shirts in a bid to keep cool.
"The train has been down for more than two hours," a man complained in the background. "We are all falling apart."
"No one told us what is happening other than the one simple explanation that the train is not running," the man continued. "No one from the crew came to help us. They didn't even offer water."
A passenger on the G44 train, which runs from Hangzhou to Tianjin, called for help in his Weibo microblog at around 7:30pm, saying someone in his carriage was having a heart attack in the heat.
Grid failures have become the Achilles heel of the Shanghai-Beijing line since its debut, a landmark project the country's railway ministry once touted as the world's fastest train with the most advanced technology.
However, repeated breakdowns have raised questions over whether the country is developing its network too fast and at the cost of passenger safety.
Japanese bullet trains have not had any accidents involving injuries or deaths since they started running in 1964.
France has had two accidents on its high-speed railways since they began in 1981 while Germany has had one accident in its 20-year high-speed history.
China has already had three accidents since the first high-speed train started running four years ago.
Wang Yongping, a spokesman for the Ministry of Railways, told a press conference on Sunday night that his ministry is confident that China's high-speed railway technology is advanced.
He made the remark after apologizing for the bullet train crash on Saturday in Wenzhou that killed 39 people as of yesterday, including two US citizens.
Another 192 people were injured in the accident, with 12 still in serious condition.
Meanwhile, in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, about 3,800 passengers were stranded on five stalled trains last night, after a bridge was destroyed by rain-triggered floods.
The power failure at 5:30pm on a section near Dingyuan County in the eastern province of Anhui brought more than 20 trains to a three-hour standstill before they started moving again at 8:35pm, a spokesman for the Shanghai Railway Bureau told the Xinhua news agency.
A piece of iron sheeting blown by heavy winds onto the electricity line was the cause of the power failure, according to a short statement by railway authorities.
More than 6,000 passengers were affected.
The delayed trains began to arrive at Shanghai's Hongqiao terminal at around 11pm. Shanghai traffic authorities prolonged the running hours of Metro Line 2 till after midnight while more shuttle buses and taxis were brought into service to help passengers get home.
Authorities apologized for the delays but that didn't satisfy many of the passengers, many of whom had to suffer in the heat of carriages where the air conditioning couldn't operate.
"The high-speed railway is even worse than a piece of decayed iron," a man said in a 52-second video posted on Sina.com by a passenger on the G20, one of the affected trains.
In the video, almost everyone in the blacked-out carriage held a fan in their hand, trying to cool themselves while some men took off their shirts in a bid to keep cool.
"The train has been down for more than two hours," a man complained in the background. "We are all falling apart."
"No one told us what is happening other than the one simple explanation that the train is not running," the man continued. "No one from the crew came to help us. They didn't even offer water."
A passenger on the G44 train, which runs from Hangzhou to Tianjin, called for help in his Weibo microblog at around 7:30pm, saying someone in his carriage was having a heart attack in the heat.
Grid failures have become the Achilles heel of the Shanghai-Beijing line since its debut, a landmark project the country's railway ministry once touted as the world's fastest train with the most advanced technology.
However, repeated breakdowns have raised questions over whether the country is developing its network too fast and at the cost of passenger safety.
Japanese bullet trains have not had any accidents involving injuries or deaths since they started running in 1964.
France has had two accidents on its high-speed railways since they began in 1981 while Germany has had one accident in its 20-year high-speed history.
China has already had three accidents since the first high-speed train started running four years ago.
Wang Yongping, a spokesman for the Ministry of Railways, told a press conference on Sunday night that his ministry is confident that China's high-speed railway technology is advanced.
He made the remark after apologizing for the bullet train crash on Saturday in Wenzhou that killed 39 people as of yesterday, including two US citizens.
Another 192 people were injured in the accident, with 12 still in serious condition.
Meanwhile, in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, about 3,800 passengers were stranded on five stalled trains last night, after a bridge was destroyed by rain-triggered floods.
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