China opens world’s first automated Beijing North–Zhangjiakou HSR line

Beijing, China (Urban Transport News): The China National Railway (CR) opened the 174 km long Beijing North–Zhangjiakou high-speed rail line on December 30. This line is the world’s first automated high-speed rail line together with the 53-km Chongli line serving venues for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The Beijing–Zhangjiakou high-speed rail line has a total of eight stations including Badaling Great Wall and Xiahuayuan North, where the 52.2km Chongli high-speed rail line ends to serve the Olympic Village in Prince Edward City. Badaling Great Wall station is one of the underground stations. It has a maximum depth of 102 meters and occupies an area of 41,000 square meters. The maximum speed of the High-Speed Bullet train on the Beijing–Zhangjiakou high-speed rail line is 350 kilometer per hour and will cut the journey time between the two cities from 3 hours to 47 minutes. The Chongli high-speed rail line has a top speed of 250 kmph to achieve a Beijing–Prince Edward City journey time of 53 minutes. The China National Railway (CR) is operating 36 round trips per day on the two new lines plus six daily round trips during peak hours. The Beijing–Zhangjiakou high-speed rail line is one of China’s eight vertical and eight horizontal high-speed corridors and connects with two new high-speed rail lines: the 287km line which runs from Zhangjiakou to Hohhot (the western section of which opened in 2017) and the 141km line which connect Zhangjiakou to Datong. As a result, the journey between Beijing and Hohhot is reduced from 9 hours 15 minutes to 2 hours 9 minutes, while the fastest time from Beijing to Datong is now 1 hour 42 minutes compared with 6 hours before the new line opened. China has the longest high-speed railway network in the world. After the opening of the Beijing North–Zhangjiakou high-speed rail line, China has completed a total network of 32,200 km HSR lines. For more information on Chinese high-speed rail projects, subscribe to our premium membership plan.