China aims to increase the total length of its high-speed train network to about 50,000 km by 2025.
A senior official has said that China will operate bullet trains in Tibet close to the Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh before July this year and signal the opening of high-speed train services in all Chinese mainland provincial level areas.
Lu Dongfu, chairman of the board of China’s State Railway Group Co. Ltd., said the 435-kilometer rail link in the regional capital of Lhasa would run internal combustion and electric-powered Foxing high-speed trains. .
In 2014, construction began on the railway line connecting Lhasa to Ningchi in eastern Tibet. It is the first electrified railroad in Tibet and slated to begin operations in June 2021.
The report states that by the end of 2020, the laying of the track was completed.
According to Tibet Railway Construction Company Limited, a subsidiary of China State Railway Group, the railway has a top speed of 160 kmph.
China has targeted to increase the total length of its high-speed train network operations to around 50,000 km by 2025, to more than 37,900 km by 2020.
The high-speed railway network will cover 98% of cities with over 500,000 inhabitants.
Lu said that China’s self-developed foxing trains now run at speeds from 160 kmph to 350 kmph.
China is expanding the train network in the southeast Tibet Autonomous Region of the country, connecting its remote parts to the Chinese mainland.
Last December, the laying of tracks for a railway line connecting Lhasa and Ningchi cities of Tibet near Arunachal Pradesh was completed.
The Sichuan-Tibet Railway will be the second railway in Tibet after the Kitchen-Tibet Railway. It will go southeast of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, one of the most active areas in the world.
China also included the construction of a “route” connecting Tibet to South Asia in the 14th Five-Year Plan, which is scheduled to begin this year.
China supported Tibet in building the route to South Asia, Xinhua report said, citing the 14th Plan document that was submitted to China’s National People’s Congress (NPC).
The annual session of the NPC began here on Friday.
“China’s Tibet Autonomous Region will be supported to open an important route to South Asia” the report states.
Although not mentioned in the Xinhua report, China has long been planning for the construction of a trans-Himalayan multi-dimensional connectivity network through Tibet and Nepal as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Nepal is strengthening the Trans-Himalayan connectivity network, especially with China, under the current government of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.
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