China's high-speed trains among the safest

BEIJING: The trains built for the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line, which is scheduled to start commercial operations in about a month, are some of the safest in the world, according to a report in the Beijing News on Monday.

The derailment coefficient of the CRH380A series trains to be used on the Beijing-Shanghai line are under 0.13 — far lower than the international standard of 0.8, the Chinese-language daily quoted Liang Jianying, a designer for the trains, as saying. The lower the coefficient, the lesser the chances of the train derailing.

The trains' designers were inspired by China's Long March rockets to boost safety and improve their shape and layout, said the report.

Also, the noise inside the carriages has been reduced to 61 decibels when the train runs at 300 kmph. The average noise inside a plane while in air is 81 decibels, compared with 76 decibels for cars travelling at 120 kmph, said the report.

On May 11, a one-month trial operation began on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail way line in preparation for the commercial service due to start at the end of this month.

Travel time cut

The 1,318-km-long high-speed rail line is expected to cut travel time between the metropolises to about five hours, with 90 pairs of bullet trains to run along it.

The trains will run at two speeds, 300 kmph and 250 kmph, with different ticket prices depending on the speed.

China plans to invest 2.8 trillion yuan ($431.7 billion) to build about 30,000 km of new rail lines over the next five years, according to the Ministry of Railway. — Xinhua