China takes fast rail ambition to new heights
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MORE EXPENSIVE, MORE CONTROVERSIAL
According to Ren, building the line through difficult terrain like in the Qilian Mountain area requires twice as much investment compared with similar high-speed line construction on low-level flat areas.
Wages for construction workers is also double, he said.
For regular high-speed rail lines with a designed speed of 350 kilometers an hour, construction costs can reach 100 million yuan (about 15.15 million U.S.dollars) per km, much higher than lines designed for allowing trains to travel at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour.
As the first long-distance high-speed rail line in west China, the second line of Lanxin Railway has a planned investment of more than 140 billion yuan in total, but the actual figure is yet to be revealed.
The project, designed as a passenger route, will make way for the existing Lanxin Railway to be used exclusively for freight.
Analysts are divided over whether the benefits outweigh the costs of building high-speed lines in the ecologically fragile western regions.
Some say higher construction costs will only push up ticket prices and, like other high-speed lines in coastal areas, might not be much favored by many passengers. Others take it as an effective means to develop the economy in the generally under-developed regions.
A senior researcher with the China Academy of Railway Sciences told Xinhua, on condition of anonymity, that it will be difficult to make money from building such a line.
"It's more of a political thing," he said. "It's more about national defense and ethnic unity."
The new railway is expected to facilitate transport of energy resources from the vast desolate northwest to other regions of the country.
Take Xinjiang for example: rich in oil, coal and natural gas reserves, the region is aiming to supply more of its resources to other areas in the coming five years.
Wang Tieshan, a PhD of economics at the Xi'an Jiaotong University, said high-speed railways are vital for closer links between cities in the west regions as they are usually far apart.
So far, several provinces and regions in the west, including Shaanxi Province in the northwest and Guizhou in the southwest, have laid out ambitious plans for high-speed rail construction over the next five years.
Currently, high-speed rail has linked Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi, with Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province. More such links between Xi'an and other west cities like Chengdu and Yinchuan are either under construction or in the planning.
At the political sessions held in early March, high-speed rail remained one of the hottest topics among national legislators and political advisors, particularly as the high-growth industry was shrouded in uncertainties following the sacking of former railway minister Liu Zhijun in February on suspicion of graft.
Sheng Guangzu, the new railway minister, said Liu's case was only an individual one and that China would continue to develop the industry in the coming years in accordance with the country's mid-and-long-term railway network plan.
Under China's economic master plan unveiled in March for the next five years, China aims to have more than 16,000 kilometers of high-speed railway by 2015. Currently, more than 8,000 kilometers of high-speed rail line are in operation, already the most in the world.
As to concerns about the massive debts caused by high construction costs and low occupancy rate due to expensive ticket prices, Sheng said the debt ratio of around 56 percent is "normal" and "controllable."
Sheng also has pledged strict and high quality standards on the construction of high-speed rails to ensure safety.
However, legislators and political advisors have called for a restraint on the expansion of the high-speed rail network to avoid over-investment driven by an irrational pursuit for speed.
Political advisor Feng Pei'en suggested that new railway construction plans be made public to solicit feedback and that decisions be made based on objective analysis of passenger flows by air, rail and road.
Zhuang Wei, another political advisor, argued that China should focus on building railways with speeds at around 250 kilometers per hour because those at higher than 300 kilometers an hour are not only much more expensive but also tend to produce more pollution.
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