A 1,428-mile high-speed rail line opened in China a Wednesday, making it the world's longest high-speed rail line. The rail line cuts the train trip by more than half from Beijing to Guangzhou.
The 1,428 mile line was opened during a commemoration ceremony at 9a.m. on Wednesday morning in which the first train left from the capital to Guangzhou. A train made a trip in the opposite direction an hour later, according to the Associated Press.
The train travels at 186 miles per hour. The line will make 35 stops in major cities and will serve 155 daily trains. Among the stops are the provincial capitals Shijiazhuang, Wuhan and Changsha. The trip from Beijing to Guangzhou usually takes 20 hours but this new trip will cut it down to eight hours, according to The Telegraph.
China's rail service has faced a series of problems in recent months. In March, part of a line collapsed in Central China. In summer 2011, a bullet train crashed, killing 40 people. The railway minister who headed the construction of the bullet train and the ministry's chief engineer were also0 detained for an unrelated incident of corruption before the crash occurred.
After the crash, high-speed rail projects came to a halt.
"The opening of the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed line shows that China's high-speed railway network has started to take shape," Zhou Li, director general of science and technology at the Ministry of Railways said according to UPI.
Train transportation is essential to China. The country hopes to build an entire grid of high-speed railways which will include four east-west lines and four north-south lines by 2020.
China has some railway competition from Brazil which is trying to start up a train service from Rio de Janeiro to San Paulo, but the Brazil likely won't be able to keep up with China which already has 5,779-miles with this new high-speed railway. By 2015, China hopes to cover 11,185 miles.
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