Monday, November 29, 2004

Maglev from Shanghai to Hangzhou? China will not build a maglev train from Shanghai to Beijing, but intead connect Hangzhou to Shanghai by this super-fast train. According to Xu Kuangdi, president of the Chinese academy of engineering, the reason is the technical risks involved when building a 1300 km railway. The costs to build a maglev with a top speed of 430 km/h to Beijing would have been around 50 billion USD, triple the cost of a conventional rapid rail line. The proposed line to Hangzhou will be 170 km, and the trip from Shanghai will only take 26 minutes. Currently trains need about at least 2.5 hours. So in the future it might be feasible to commute between beautiful Hangzhou and Shanghai. Maybe it's time to start to invest in real estate in Hangzhou? 8:16:55 PM    comment []