Nation's high-speed railway shows fast-track growth

With ample funds support, major infrastructure construction progresses

The nation's relentless push to bolster its infrastructure is bearing fruit, with a number of high-speed railway projects seeing completion and operation.

In Fujian province, the Longyan-Wuping section on the Longyan-Longchuan High-speed Railway began operations on Dec 26.

The opening of the section marks a transformative leap for Fujian's Wuping county, as the old revolutionary base has also stepped into the era of HSR connectivity, builders participating in the project said.

Construction of the 92-kilometer section, which was undertaken by several State contractors, presented multiple "notably challenging engineering tasks", such as the Tingjiang River railway bridge.

The bridge, mainly built by China Railway 24th Bureau Group Corp — a China Railway Construction Corp unit — stretches 1.73 km and features a 325-meter continuous rigid frame beam crossing over the river, a significant technical and construction feat, said Yi Jun, chief engineer with CR24.

The project team employed building information modeling (BIM) technology, simulating collisions involving beam reinforcements and prestressed pipelines, to ensure optimized reinforcement and cutting positions and guarantee the engineering quality of the project, Yi said.

Furthermore, multiple monitoring devices, intelligent tensioning and grouting techniques were used to safeguard overall construction quality, he added.

"All our teams were requested to bear in mind 'green construction' in projects that we carry out nationwide, and the company is prioritizing ecological preservation as a key objective when evaluating the quality of the project," Yi said, adding that CR24 has been increasingly implementing stringent environmentally friendly construction measures to minimize any impact.

The Longyan-Longchuan High-speed Railway stretches from Fujian's Longyan to Longchuan West Station in Heyuan, Guangdong province, spanning a total length of 290 km.

The Longyan-Wuping section is one of three sections along the HSR. Some 64 km of track was newly constructed, allowing trains to run at speeds of up to 250 kilometers per hour.

The HSR project is part of the nation's broader push to form an "Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal" railway network as its main high-speed railway network, which was proposed by the central authorities in 2016 to further develop the network over the mid to long term.

China Railway Group, the nation's railway operator, said that so far, more than 35,300 km of railways of the country's main HSR network have been put into service, accounting for some 80 percent of the network's total length.

During the annual Central Economic Work Conference held in Beijing in December, Chinese leaders highlighted that investment and financing mechanisms should be improved, with new cooperation mechanisms for government and nongovernment capital to be implemented and nongovernment capital to be supported in participating in new-type infrastructure initiatives.

Due to the increasingly sufficient funds supporting the sector, many provinces reported new operations of HSRs by the end of the last year. Shandong province, for example, embraced the operation of two new HSR sections — the Jinan-Puyang section on the Jinan-Zhengzhou HSR and the Laixi-Rongcheng section on the Weifang-Rongcheng HSR.

Experts said such mass infrastructure work results at the end of the year have become a routine phenomenon in recent years.

"With abundant capital inflow into the infrastructure sector last year, major projects such as HSR construction will continue to see booming development in the first several months of this year," said Long Chaocan, an investment consultant with China Galaxy Securities Co Ltd.

In the January-November period last year, 1,636 km of new railway lines were put into operation nationwide, including 1,488 km of HSR tracks. By the end of November, the operating mileage of railways nationwide reached 155,500 km, including 43,700 km of HSR, China Railway Group said.