Thailand's New High Speed Rail System

[Guest fountainhall]

As we know, China is gong to build Thailand’s new high-speed rail lines. China’s own high-speed rail system is coming on line very quickly, with the new 1,318 km Shanghai/Beijing service due to open later this year. I travelled on these new trains when I was in Shanghai in August. They are amazing. The 100 kms between Shanghai and lovely city of Suzhou took all of 22 minutes.

 

According to an article in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post today (which I am unable to link here as I am not an SCMP on-line subscriber), China has been opening up 1,500 kms of new track annually for the last 5 years. This year that length increases to 4,500 kms. All of which sounds wonderful for Chinese commuters and those countries, like Thailand, which China will eventually link.

 

But there is a catch.

 

The breakneck speed at which track is being laid means engineers are likely to have to sacrifice quality for quantity on the lines' foundations which could ultimately halve their lifespan.

 

The problem lies in the use of high-quality fly ash, a fine powder chemically identical to volcanic ash, collected from the chimneys of coal-powered power plants. When mixed with cement and gravel, it can give the tracks’ concrete base a life span of 100 years.

 

According to a study by the First Survey and Design Institute of China Railways in 2008, coal-fired plants on the mainland could produce enough high quality fly-ash for the construction of 100 kms of high speed track per year. The fly-ash required for the Beijing/Shanghai line would be more than that produced by all the coal-fired power plants in the world.

 

Enter low-quality fly-ash. Professor Wang Pen, lead scientist at the Cement and New Building Materials Research Institute under the China Building Materials Academy, said that given poor quality control on the mainland, the use of low-quality fly-ash, and other low-grade construction materials, was “almost inevitable” in high-speed railway construction . . . and would significantly weaken railway lines foundations and shorten a railway’s lifespan by about half . . .

 

But Zhu Ming, a researcher at Southwest Jiaotoing University’s School of Civil Engineering who experimented with fly ash at a Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway construction site last year – was even more pessimistic.

 

“Quality problems with Chinese high-speed railways will arise in about five years,” he said . . . “Small problems such as occasional cracks and slips that delay trains have already occurred. Big problems . . . will come soon.

 

"When that happens, the miracle of Chinese high-speed rail will be reduced to dust.”

All of which must be extremely reassuring to the Thailand government which has placed its faith and its bucks in this new rail system. I for one will think twice about taking high-speed trains in China after about 2015!

[Guest]

Let's wait & see. The probability of you being on the first train to crash is quite low.

 

The bigger threat is the incompetent SRT having anything to do with the Thai network. The high speed system should be run by an independent company that considers the customers needs.

[llz]

The problem with independent companies is that they care for their shareholders dividends much more than for their customers needs/comfort/conveniency/security.

[Guest]

NO!

 

Killing customers is bad for business.

That's why airlines have achieved remarkable levels of reliability these days.

That's why Richard Branson bought trains with much higher levels of safety than recommended by the government. He was actually criticised for overspending on safety.

 

Also, if there's any effective competition, making customers wait or giving them bad service means you lose customers. That's why a small private airline like Nok treats it's customers much more professionally than SRT in the same country.

 

I generally find the worst levels of service and the most dangerous disregard for customer safety are to be found when dealing with state monopolies. Many of these don't even understand the concept of a customer.

[pong]

 

I generally find the worst levels of service and the most dangerous disregard for customer safety are to be found when dealing with state monopolies. Many of these don't even understand the concept of a customer.

This might very well apply to about anything in China-and most of it is in fact staterun or owned. All those shiny new highways, buses etc. start to fall apart after 2-3 years.

Agree with z909 in his wry comment, though as with about anything in life, nothing is 100% true. The mantra of always slamming greed for profit and private companies for that appears to much parrotting and too less own proper thinking.

Now just think 1 step further: nationalise all Thai gay bars/places and have the Thai govmt. run them, not for profit, but for safety's sake and lowwer prices. Guess what would happen?