High-speed railway accounts for over half of China's railway investment

In 2009, China pumped 701.3 billion yuan (102.7 billion U.S. dollars) of fixed-asset investments into railways, an increase pf 69.1 percent, or 286.6 billion yuan, compared with the previous year. Investment in high-speed passenger rail lines and intercity railway lines were close to 300 billion yuan, accounting for almost 60 percent of investment for all launched projects, according to the report released yesterday by China's Ministry of Railway (MOR).

Investment in infrastructure construction in 2009 accounted for 80.3 percent of the overall investment in railway networks in the ninth and 10th Five-Year Plans, hitting a record high. Railway investment was 623.2 billion yuan, up 73 percent; new railway lines, double-track lines and electrified railways reached 5,557.3 kilometers, 4,128.8 kilometers and 8,448.3 kilometers, respectively, or up 2.2 times, 1.1 times and 3.3 times year-on-year, all hitting a record high. Around 5,461.4 kilometers of new railway lines and 4,063.2 kilometers of double-track lines were completed in 2009, increasing 94.5 percent and 83.8 percent year-on-year, respectively.

The report showed that traffic on China's passenger and freight-services railways both increased in 2009. Passenger traffic reached 1.52 billion, up by 4.4 percent year-on-year; freight traffic hit 3.33 billion tons, increasing by 0.8 percent.

In 2009, nationwide railway freight traffic amounted to 3.33 billion tons, up 61.01 million tons year-on-year, surging 1.9 percent. China's freight turnover volume increased by 0.5 percent, or 13.29 billion ton-kilometers, to 2.52 trillion ton-kilometers.

People's Daily Online