China will complete its seven-year project to build a high-altitude railway to the Tibet Autonomous Region before 1 July, according to a statement released by China State Railway Group on Saturday.
Lu Dongfu, chairman of China State Railway Group, said the 435km link between Lhasa and Nyingchi in eastern Tibet would run Fuxing trainsets, powered by a mix of electricity and diesel. The line will be medium-speed, running at 160km/h, according to Tibet Railway Construction, the subsidiary of China State Railway Group that is building it.
Fuxing trains operate at a speed range of 160 kp/h to 350 kp/h.
The Xinhua news agency reported in December that track-laying work on the line had been completed at a cost of $4.8bn.
The line has a total of 47 tunnels and 120 bridges.
Zhu Jintang, deputy general manager of Tibet Railway Construction, said at the time that his company had obtained more than 30 patents on the line, which has to deal with the problems of extreme temperatures.
He added that these would help with the larger project to build the Sichuan-Tibet Railway. At present, work is under way on the Ya’an-Nyingchi central section of this line.
Lu, who is a deputy to the National People’s Congress, was speaking on the sidelines of the "Two Sessions" meeting taking place in Beijing. He added that China aimed to extend the total length of high-speed operation to around 50,000km by 2025, compared with 37,900km at present.
This will cover 98% of cities with over 500,000 residents.
Image: Lhasa and Nyingchi are presently connected by highway (Ppmaker2007/Dreamstime)
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