Three Chinese regions cited most fit for mag-lev transport

Yangtze and Pearl river deltas and the juncture of Beijing and Tianjin municipalities and Hebei Province are taken as the best places for developing magnetic-levitation transport in China.

The view is shared by a group of specialists who attended a recent national conference on comprehensive transport development held in Guiyang, capital of mountainous Guizhou Province in southwest China.

Mao Baohua, professor with the state key lab for rail transport control and safety in Beijing Jiaotong University, said mag-lev services have advantages in speed, comfort and technology, and disadvantages such as high cost and low returns.

"It is costly to build mag-lev rails, that is why it is difficult to spread mag-lev technology," said Mao. "Therefore, governmental input and subsidies are necessary to build and operate mag-lev railways."

The above mentioned three areas feature dense population, booming economy and huge public transport demand, he said.

China has built a commercial mag-lev route, with a length of 33 km and a maxim speed of 430 km per hour, in Shanghai. The maximum passenger transport volume of the mag-lev service is placed at 150 million a year.

In early March, the National Development and Reform Commission announced the State Council had approved a plan for constructing a 175-km mag-lev route between Shanghai and Hangzhou cities in east China.

The engineering cost is 35 billion yuan (4.38 billion U.S.dollars), or 200 million yuan per kilometer. It is due to be finished by 2008 and operational for the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010.

Source: Xinhua