New high-speed trains on drawing board

Companies submitted design proposals for a new generation of bullet train to China Railway Corp at a meeting in Shanghai on Wednesday.

Classed in the existing "Fuxing" family of trains, the new model will be developed to stringent Chinese railway standards and technologies. It will travel 250 kilometers per hour. Fuxing translates as "rejuvenation".

CRC, the State-owned rail operator, said the new models will be developed for various environments and will feature lower manufacturing and operating costs and improved energy efficiency. Trains in the Fuxing family use less energy, produce less noise and have a longer service life than those in the "Harmony" family currently in service, it said.

Companies including CSR Qingdao Sifang and CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles have submitted designs for the new model.

The domestically designed Fuxing family of bullet trains entered service in September. A Fuxing model runs between Beijing and Shanghai at 350 km/h, making it the world's fastest train service.

According to CRC, the Fuxing train carried 592,000 passengers－averaging 95 percent of capacity－on the Beijing-Shanghai line in its first full month of operation, and more than 99 percent of the trains ran on time, the company said.

The Beijing Railway Bureau said Fuxing trains are also being used on the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed line and on the Beijing-Tianjin intercity rail, but they are allowed to run at only 300 km/h for the time being.

Fuxing trains on the Beijing-Guangzhou line reached 100 percent capacity, with 420,000 passengers carried, it said.

The Beijing-Tianjin intercity bullet train opened in 2008－the first high-speed rail line in the country. Nationally, since then, 7 billion trips have been made on China's expanding high-speed rail network.

China has the world's most extensive high-speed rail network, with 22,000 km of track currently in use.