Chinese Trains Go High-Speed

by Brian A Kennedy | April 19, 2007 at 08:10 am

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Faced with skyrocketing demands for mass transit, China started running yesterday its first high-speed trains. There's scores of them, they run at 125mph and they can reportedly make the 53-mile trip from Shanghai to Suzhou in 39 minutes (okay, so the math's a bit weird in this story). Here in the US, we have, uh, Acela.

It felt like we were traveling on an airplane," said Chen Lijuan, 78, a Suzhou native who lives in Shanghai. "In the past it took more than an hour to get here."

The speed upgrade is the sixth in the history of China's railways, which provide a vital, low-cost link between the scattered regions of the vast nation of 1.3 billion people.

On some routes, top speeds will climb to 155 mph, cutting two hours off the trip between Shanghai and Beijing to as little as nine hours.

Millions of Chinese take trains every year, but the railways have been facing stiff competition from the growing highway system and increasingly inexpensive, more convenient air travel.