China's safer railway operations boon to industry

BEIJING - There were fewer accidents and deaths on China's railways in 2014, official statistics showed on Monday, in a boost to industrial expansion both at home and abroad.

Data released by the National Railway Administration (NRA) showed that 1,232 people died in railway accidents in 2014, down 7.8 percent from 2013, according to the Ministry of Transport website.

The NRA attributed the accidents mainly to floods, trespassing on tracks and nonstandard construction work along railway lines.

In 2014, 2.36 billion people traveled by rail, while freight trains transported 3.81 billion tonnes of cargo. Of the 112,000 km of track in operation, over 16,000 km, 14.3 percent, was high speed rail (HSR).

Last year, 8,427 km of new track was added to the network, with 65 percent being HSR. More than 10,000 km of new high-speed track is under construction.

Spending on new trains hit 146 billion yuan (24 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014, up 22.2 percent, while investment in new railroads rose 12.6 percent to 662 billion yuan.

China is increasing its involvement in overseas rail projects and is in discussions with the United States, Russia, India and European countries.

Yu Weiping, vice president of CNR, China's leading railway equipment maker, said last Monday that the company is building an assembly plant near Boston, after it won the bid for 284 metro vehicles worth 567 million U.S. dollars for the city.

China Railway ErYuan Engineering Group, a branch of China Railway Group, was chosen on Thursday as a co-contractor by Russian Railways to build a 770-km high-speed line connecting Moscow with Kazan. The contract is said to be worth 20 billion rubles (over 380 million U.S. dollars).

A Chinese delegation led by an NRA official was also in India on Saturday to assess the feasibility of a high-speed link between Mysuru and Chennai.

One of China South Railway's (CSR) state-of-the-art products, the CRH 380A, went on show at the Milan Expo on Saturday. The CRH (China railway high-speed) train hit a speed of 486.1 km per hour in a test in 2010. The train has run safely for more than 300 million km.

A merger between CSR and CNR has been approved and they will form a new company named CRRC Corporation Ltd. In separate notices filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Wednesday, both companies said their stocks will stop trading on the Shanghai bourse on Thursday, because the board of directors has decided to accelerate the merger.

It aims to build a new transnational and globally significant provider of railway equipment, according to CSR.

Stocks of the CNR and the CSR dipped by 5.96 percent and 5.55 percent on Monday to close at 30.62 yuan and 29.94 yuan respectively.