China now has 19,245km of HSR, with 8,645km built for running at up to 350kph, with 10,600km available for 250kph. Construction continues at a rapid pace: by 2020 the network should reach 25,000km. In 2014, China Railways carried a mind-boggling 2.23bn passengers, with 800m using high speed trains - equivalent to half the entire UK rail usage each year. Recent studies show that CR usage continues to increase - thought to be a result of the releasing of demand which was constructed and suppressed on the old conventional network, which for decades struggled to handle the demands placed upon it. The busiest routes are Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Guangzhou each of which carried more than 100m passengers last year. The World Bank estimates that CR HSR services outpaced aviation, achieving 39% a year 2008-13 compared with 13 for airlines. This trend is set to continue. passenger interviews reveal that HSR had: "...had a marked impact on local businesses and personal mobility of their staff. This had brought about not only increased productivity but also increased opportunities for reunion ion with family and friends and tourism."
CR already operates 28 different ones of hi speed train in a fleet of around 1,500 sets. Nearly 950 of these were built by CSR and of the total fleet, 841 sets ca run at up to 350kph with 663 capable of up to 250kph. The HSR fleet records around 2.4bnkm a year with some sets covering 800,000 km a year.
We read it in: Railway Gazette International, July 2015, page 35
