The Rise of the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway Requires Supporting Infrastructure
The Wuhan-Guangzhou Passenger Dedicated Line, which spans an operational length of 1,068.6 kilometers, is scheduled to begin trial operations on December 20 according to plans. At that time, trains traveling at speeds of 350 kilometers per hour will reduce travel time between Guangzhou and Wuhan from 10 hours to just 3.
Tang dynasty poet Li Bai's depiction of the Yangtze River can now be transposed onto modern high-speed rail: setting off from Guangzhou in the morning, one can make a round trip to Wuhan, a thousand miles away, within the same day; the continuous cries of gibbons along the banks barely register as the swift "train" traverses countless mountains. The Wuhan-Guangzhou railway will upend people's old notions of space and time, with the ensuing economic, social, and cultural changes unfolding gradually over the years to come.
This is the world's first long-distance passenger dedicated line with ballastless tracks capable of reaching speeds of 350 kilometers per hour, and also represents the culmination of China's latest achievements in railway modernization. It will fundamentally address the issue of strained transport capacity on the Wuhan-Guangzhou section of the Beijing-Guangzhou railway.
In collaboration with the "Changsha Evening News" and the "Wuhan Evening News," our newspaper has formed a joint reporting team to delve into the front and backstage of the Wuhan-Guangzhou railway construction, unveiling its mysterious veil. Starting today, our newspaper will successively launch a series of reports titled "Wuhan-Guangzhou is Coming."
"The idea of building a new railway from Wuhan to Guangzhou was already present in the Ministry of Railways' 'Ninth Five-Year Plan.' By 2003, all parties felt that the technical conditions were ripe, and began actively advocating for the promotion of the Wuhan-Guangzhou line's project initiation," recalled Wang Zujian, Director of the Hubei Provincial Railway Construction Leading Group Office during the interview.
At the March 2003 Tenth National People's Congress, led by then Guangdong Provincial Party Committee Standing Committee member and Guangzhou Party Secretary Lin Shusen, more than 30 national deputies proposed a motion urging the state to quickly construct the Wuhan to Guangzhou section of the Beijing-Guangzhou passenger dedicated line. The Hunan and Hubei delegations also independently proposed similar motions, with all parties eagerly anticipating the birth of the Wuhan-Guangzhou passenger dedicated line. The State Council attached great importance to these motions and approved the feasibility study report the following year.
At the time, China's high-speed rail had already taken its first tentative steps: in October 2003, the Qinhuangdao-Shenyang railway passenger dedicated line, independently researched, designed, and constructed by China, opened, with a design speed of 200 kilometers per hour. A company-based asset operation responsibility management system was adopted for maintenance and repair, serving as the prototype for the later passenger dedicated line operation model.
The most direct reason for constructing the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway was the saturation of existing lines.
The Guangzhou to Wuhan section belongs to the Beijing-Guangzhou railway, which is the busiest and most densely used trunk line nationwide. Its mixed operation mode of passenger and freight trains became a bottleneck for railway development: passenger trains needed to increase speed while freight trains required heavy loads and slow travel, leading to mutual interference. According to estimates, each passenger train on the Beijing-Guangzhou line affects the transportation of two freight trains.
During the Spring Festival travel rush, the contradiction is most concentrated. In the Pearl River Delta, where migrant workers are concentrated, even after fully utilizing the passenger train capacity on the Beijing-Guangzhou line, it still cannot meet the massive passenger demand, and freight transport is "unable to send out a single train"; Wuhan faces the same situation—"During the Spring Festival travel rush, only two fresh goods freight trains to Hong Kong and Macao can pass, and other freight trains, even if they are sent out, often stop on the road, with no certainty about when they will arrive," said Wang Zujian.
The opening of the Wuhan-Guangzhou line will release the freight potential of the existing network. According to He Bangmo, a researcher at the Railway Science Research Institute, after the passenger load on the Beijing-Guangzhou line is diverted to the Wuhan-Guangzhou line, the freight capacity can grow by more than double.
Another backdrop for constructing the Wuhan-Guangzhou line is the rise of "city clusters" on China's economic map.
Dong Yan, a researcher at the Comprehensive Transport Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, stated that in the past, China's economic development was mainly centered around cities, but in recent years regional economic development has been rapid. As a whole, "city clusters" have gradually emerged—such as the integration processes initiated by the Pearl River Delta and Changsha-Zhuzhou-Tanzhou regions, and various regions also started planning intercity rail networks.
The rise of city clusters and the transportation demands between them mean that highways, which mainly focus on short-distance transport, can no longer keep up with the situation, and aviation transport with smaller carrying capacities struggles to complete the new mission. High-speed rail has emerged accordingly: a single EMU (Electric Multiple Unit) train, carrying 600-800 passengers, equals ten buses or three airplanes, occupying less land and consuming fewer resources per unit of passenger capacity; additionally, under the trend of increasingly tight energy supply, rising oil prices, and growing environmental pressure, high-speed rail powered by electricity is more suited to the needs of the times.
The rise of city clusters requires the support of a high-speed rail network. According to the plan, the country will invest 1.3 trillion yuan over the next three years to build a "four verticals and four horizontals" passenger dedicated line network; by 2020, the construction mileage of China's high-speed railways with speeds of 200 kilometers per hour and above will exceed 18,000 kilometers, accounting for more than half of the world's total high-speed railway mileage. Compared to countries like Japan, France, and Germany, which have decades of high-speed rail construction experience, China's high-speed rail has achieved a latecomer's advantage, completing in just a few years what took other countries half a century to develop.
Huang Qiang, chief expert at the China Academy of Railway Sciences, once predicted: "By 2012, taking the train will be like taking a bus—people can get on and go whenever they want, basically going wherever they wish."
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