Beijing–Tianjin Intercity Rail 京津城际铁路

[randomness]

On August 1st, in time for the Olympics, China put their first conventional high-speed rail line into service*. It is the fastest conventional train service in the world, with a top speed of 350 km/h (over 215 mph). Beijing (the capital) and Tianjin (the third largest city) are 120 km apart (just under 75 miles).

The trains run at ten minute intervals (as of September 14th, when they added ten pairs of trains to the service) between 6:30AM and 10PM, and cost 69 yuan (about ten dollars) one-way in first class. The new service has cut travel time from 70 minutes to 30.

Wikipedia article

Photos of train and brand new saucer-shaped Beijing South Station in the CNReviews blog posts Part 1 and Part 2.

I very much want to ride this.

*There's already a 431 km/h (268 mph) maglev connecting Shanghai Pudong Airport with a somewhat inconvenient outlying station on the Shanghai Metro. Of course, I want to ride that, too.

Comments

[obra.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. It's looking like I'll be in Beijing for a few days in November.

Tempting.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

You should ride it and tell me about it! :)

[denyse.livejournal.com]

I didn't ride the maglev last time I flew into Pudong since got my brother to arrange pickup. It's kind of inconvenient, is Shanghai Metro. But I kind of wished I could ride it!

Hey, been meaning to ask you - I am having the hardest time getting chinese fonts to input into my PC. I dunno why. I installed them, told it to swap between font input when I use ctrl something or the other in the languages control panel and it still refuses to work. *grrr* Am I missing something mind bogglingly obvious?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It *is* inconvenient, that change. I might ride it whether I'm flying in to Shanghai Pudong or not, though, just for the ride.

As for the fonts, I have no clue, because I have never tried using Chinese on a PC. My sympathies...good luck!