China’s railway authority wants to build a high-speed railway line from Urumqi in the western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to Tehran through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The idea was put forward last week at a One Belt One Road forum by He Huawu, chief engineer of the state-run China Railway Corporation.
The northeast-southwest line would be complementary to the existing railway networks in Central Asia, he said, and would circumvent difficulties posed by the incompatibility between the region’s wide-gauge track systems and China’s standard-gauge system.
The difference between Central Asia’s 1.52-metre and China’s 1.435-metre gauges has for years caused long delays and undermined the railway’s ability to compete with maritime routes.
While it was unlikely that this was likely to change, he said, the new high-speed rail link would be able to connect seamlessly to China’s network and other regions.
rains could run on the same route.
China proposes Urumqi-Iran rail link
Source: AKIpress