China HSR Map

[itfcfan]

I maintain this map to keep track of Chinese HSR route development - I thought I'd share it:
http://goo.gl/RnxEWp

 

[higthomas]

Nice map, are these all dedicated HSR lines, or are they shared in part, for example on the entrance to city centres?

 

[itfcfan]

Nice map, are these all dedicated HSR lines, or are they shared in part, for example on the entrance to city centres?

Most HSR lines in China are constructed as new lines throughout, with the majority of services running to new stations constructed in the suburbs of cities (e.g. Guangzhou South, 17km from central Guangzhou) or reconstructed stations slightly closer to the centre (e.g. Beijing South - reconstructed in 2008 for High Speed services - 7km from central Beijing).

Where classic railways already exist, most new lines are classified as Passenger Dedicated Lines (PDL) - this applies to main routes such as Bejiing - Wuhan - Guangzhou and Beijing - Nanjing - Shanghai. These lines usually have a design speed of 350kph, but since the Wenzhou crash in 2011 (which actually occurred on a mixed use railway) speeds have been restricted to ~300kph mainly for political purposes.

However, on other routes where there is no parallel classic line exists, the new lines have been built as mixed use with a maximum design speed of 250kph. This applies to the line of the south-east coast of China linking Shenzhen (bordering Hong Kong) to Ningbo (near Shanghai).

A good comparison is this classic line map (not updated since some of the earliest HSR lines were built):
http://www.cnvol.com/images/chinarailwaymap.gif

 

[itfcfan]

For anyone that's interested, I've updated the map with several railways in north-east China, around Harbin.

Later this month, the far west HSR, Lanzhou-Urumqi is due to open. This line takes Chinese HSR very close to the border with Kazakhstan - filling in a third of the land between Pacific - Atlantic with HSR.

 

[89-763-733]

Have you got ACCURATE station to station distances for highspeed lines in China. Sources I have seen vary wildly.

 

[itfcfan]

Have you got ACCURATE station to station distances for highspeed lines in China. Sources I have seen vary wildly.

I don't have an authoritative source for mileage/km.

 

[itfcfan]

I've added the following line openings to the map:

2014-11-16: Urumqi - Hami (530km, part of Lanzhou - Urumqi)
2014-12-10: Hangzhou - Nanchang (582km, part of Shanghai - Kunming, allowing Shanghai - Guangzhou direct service over HSR)
2014-12-16: Changsha - Huaihua (416km, part of Shanghai - Kunming)

Several other lines are scheduled to be open by the end of this year (2014).

http://goo.gl/RnxEWp

 

[dutchflyer]

as an aside to this nice maps here, i would like to add that the metro (underground) building frenzy that China also has (now 20+ and some 4 more planned to open in 2015) are often lines that link those faraway HS-stops with the actual citycentre. All can be found on www.urbanrail.net
So your actual trip will likely go: metro to HS stop, all the ID+luggage checks, HS train to B, then local metro into town. Which adds up to 2 hrs to any A->B trip. In all fairness though, the old stations were far too small to also accomodate busy Hs-lines as extra.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
as another aside and just as some small add-on: the direct link Sjanghai-Ningbo is done via the longest bridge in the world, with buses ev. 30 mins, I really do not know if they are still faster as the HS trains via Hangzhou or not. Rode over it some 5 years ago in my last China trip. At that time Hangzhou-Ningbo had just local trains, horrendous overcrowded, ev 2-3 hrs, but direct express buses every 5-10 mins or so.
A nasty thing for foreigners (beside the ever stricter general visa-rules) is that HS-trains require ID-checks and tickets are only quickly sold against Chinese ID (which have chips-they can also thus do electronic boarding lists for ships astonishingly quick) via machines- foreigners have to Q up and have it done all manually entered in the system.

 

[po8crg]

I've seen a proposal to extend from Urumqi to Moscow (via Kazakhstan). Does anyone know how serious this is?