The fastest train in the United States is Amtrak’s Acela Express, which can travel up to 150 mph (214 kph) and get you from New York to Chicago in about 22 hours with a transfer in Washington D.C. And that’s if you don’t factor in inevitable delays.
China, however, has built railways with trains that can travel comparable distances in a fraction of the time. Business Insider reports that The China Railway Corporation, the country’s government-owned train operator, has built an extensive network of high-speed rails known as ‘the bullet train’ that covers about 15,500 miles. Their latest project, the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, is nearing completion, and will be an 80-mile step in China’s plan to extend ‘the bullet train’ to 24,000 miles.
The goal is for the high-speed rail to connect every city with more than 500,000 people. Right now there are over 100 cities in China with over 1 million citizens, and that number is expected to grow to 221 by 2025. Once all these cities are connected (of which many already are), Chinese citizens will essentially be able to get anywhere in the country with easy.
When you factor in airport security, flying is not really any faster than China’s high-speed rails, and it’s certainly no more convenient. There are 746 miles between Beijing to Xi’an, a few more than between Chicago and New York, yet the CRC rail would run circles around the Acela Express, only taking 4.5 hours to travel that distance. The direct flight from Chicago to New York is about two and a half hours if you get a direct flight, but you can’t forget about airport security lines, checking baggage, and, seeing that neither city’s airports are downtown, travel to and from the terminal.
China’s railway construction began in 2008 in preparation for the Beijing Olympics as a 70-mile demonstration line. The country has $550 billion reserved for a five-year expansion plan (2016-2020). The expansion isn’t just to large cities, though.
Despite the railway’s overall success, there have been a few a few bumps in the road. CRC has tried to bring stops to smaller towns to boost development and real estate prices far away from city centers, but theses stations had similar designs as the ones made for the big city, and they were far more expensive and ostentatious than necessary for those locations.
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