Society

Paper: Beijing-Shanghai high-speed trains safe

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-05-30 13:14

BEIJING - Trains built for the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line, which is scheduled to start commercial operations in about a month, are very safe, the Beijing News said Monday.

CRH380A series trains to be used on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail are under 0.13 derailment coefficient, far lower than the international standard of 0.8, the Chinese-language daily cited Liang Jianying, a designer for the trains, as saying.

The lower the derailment coefficient figure, the less chance the train has of derailment.

Train designers were inspired by China's Long March rockets series to boost CRH380A trains' safety and improve their shape and layout, it said.

Also, different technologies were applied to reduce noise inside carriages to 61 decibels when the train runs at 300 kmph, according to the report.

The average noise inside a cabin of a plane while in the air is 81 decibels, compared with 76 decibels for cars traveling at 120 kmph, it said.

Starting May 11, the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail began a one-month trial operation to finalize the preparation for the commercial service due to start at the end of June.

The 1,318-km-long high-speed rail line is expected to cut travel time between the metropolises to about five hours, with 90 pairs of bullet trains to run along it.

The trains will run at two speeds, 300 kmph and 250 kmph, with different ticket prices depending on the speed. The exact price of tickets is not yet known.

China plans to invest 2.8 trillion yuan ($431.7 billion) to build about 30,000 kilometers of new rail lines over the next five years, according to the Ministry of Railway.