Bank says rails bring speed, but also debt
By Alan Wheatley and Emma Graham-Harrison |
July 29, 2010, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
CHINA'S construction of a vast high-speed rail network will give it one of the world's most advanced rail industries, but it needs to monitor the debts it is running up in the process, the World Bank said yesterday.
China plans to build 13,000 kilometers of high-speed rail lines by 2012, more than the rest of the world combined. The Beijing-Shanghai line due to open next year will halve the travel time between the two cities to five hours.
Trains will travel at speeds up to 350km an hour on newly built lines and 250km an hour on upgraded track.
By 2020 the network will serve more than 90 percent of the population, at a budgeted cost of 2 trillion yuan (US$295 billion), and include 16,000km of the fastest newly built lines, according to the government's blueprint.
The aim is to ensure most provincial capitals are no more than an eight-hour journey from Beijing, boosting growth and urbanization in poorer interior areas.
State of the art
China is building a fleet of state-of-the-art trains for the network with the help of foreign firms including Bombardier Inc, Siemens, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd and Alstom SA.
"This transfer of technology and know-how, together with the experience of building and operating several thousand route-kilometers of high-speed railway, will make China's one of the most advanced railway industries in the world," the World Bank said in a report.
"This should position the country to compete internationally when other countries adopt high-speed railways," the report said, likening the creation of the network to the building of the Interstate highway system, which knitted the United States together half a century ago.
The breakneck expansion will create hundreds of thousands of jobs ?? for skilled engineers as well as manual laborers ?? and will release much-needed capacity for growing freight traffic, the bank said.
However, there are the financial costs.
"Even in China, the sustainability of railway debt arising from the program as it proceeds will need to be closely monitored and payback periods will not be short, as they cannot be for such 'lumpy' and long-lived assets," the report said.
China plans to build 13,000 kilometers of high-speed rail lines by 2012, more than the rest of the world combined. The Beijing-Shanghai line due to open next year will halve the travel time between the two cities to five hours.
Trains will travel at speeds up to 350km an hour on newly built lines and 250km an hour on upgraded track.
By 2020 the network will serve more than 90 percent of the population, at a budgeted cost of 2 trillion yuan (US$295 billion), and include 16,000km of the fastest newly built lines, according to the government's blueprint.
The aim is to ensure most provincial capitals are no more than an eight-hour journey from Beijing, boosting growth and urbanization in poorer interior areas.
State of the art
China is building a fleet of state-of-the-art trains for the network with the help of foreign firms including Bombardier Inc, Siemens, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd and Alstom SA.
"This transfer of technology and know-how, together with the experience of building and operating several thousand route-kilometers of high-speed railway, will make China's one of the most advanced railway industries in the world," the World Bank said in a report.
"This should position the country to compete internationally when other countries adopt high-speed railways," the report said, likening the creation of the network to the building of the Interstate highway system, which knitted the United States together half a century ago.
The breakneck expansion will create hundreds of thousands of jobs ?? for skilled engineers as well as manual laborers ?? and will release much-needed capacity for growing freight traffic, the bank said.
However, there are the financial costs.
"Even in China, the sustainability of railway debt arising from the program as it proceeds will need to be closely monitored and payback periods will not be short, as they cannot be for such 'lumpy' and long-lived assets," the report said.
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