Prior to Olympic tourists benefiting from the huge construction of the Beijing to Tianjin high-speed railway, local residents will be able to enjoy the ride.

 

The Beijing-Tianjin inter-city passenger rail line will be completed and open before August 2008 when the Beijing Olympic Games open.

 

The train will move passengers between the cities in just half an hour. This is 45 minutes quicker than at present. The train will travel at 200 kilometers per hour (kmp) but can reach speeds of 350 kmp.

 

The 115-kilometre railway is expected to cost 12.3 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion), said Ma Zhenhong, a press official with the Tianjin Municipal Communications Commission in a phone interview.

 

Earlier reports in the Beijing Times said the Ministry of Railways and municipal government of Tianjin had each identified 2.6 billion yuan (US$325 million) for the project while Beijing contributed its share by providing land and paying for the resettlement of residents. A company has been established to manage the project.

 

The construction of the passenger rail line started in July this year. The work will finish before the end of next year and the railway will be put into service before August 2008. "The rail link is an important project to serve the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games," Ma said.

 

The Beijing-Tianjin inter-city passenger line is also believed to be the pilot project for a massive high-speed rail network in China. This will be the country's first high-standard passenger rail service.

 

Capable of speeds up to 350 kilometers per hour, trains manufactured by Tangshan Locomotive Plant in Hebei Province, which use Germany-based Siemens technology, will be first put into use on the Beijing-Tianjin inter-city passenger line.

 

Siemens and Tangshan Locomotive Plant were reported to have jointly won a bid in 2005 to manufacture 60 locomotives each with a design speed of 300 kmp for the railway ministry. Of these, three will be entirely imported from Siemens and 57 will be domestically manufactured.  

  

Siemens was also reported to have won a contract together with two other Chinese companies to provide signal, telecommunication and electricity supply systems for the high-speed railway.

 

In order to promote economic integration of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region China plans to build a two-hour circle to cover major cities in the Bohai Rim Region. A total of 710 kilometers of inter-city railway lines will be built in the region's inter-city network before 2020.

 

The Beijing-Tianjin inter-city passenger rail service will serve as an axis of the regional rail network to meet the soaring demand for travel between the cities.

 

Currently the municipalities, each with a population over 10 million, are linked by highways, expressways and rail. The present railway system is under pressure handling 25.55 million passengers annually.  

 

The new passenger rail line is expected to handle 32 million passengers in 2008 and 54 million in 2015.

 

There are currently three expressways under construction that'll link the two cities.

 

(China Daily November 27, 2006)