Speed to blame in the Shandong train crash

The Beijing News;April 29, 2008

Most of today's newspapers, including The Beijing News, put the April 28th railway accident in Shandong on front page. The accident left 71 dead and 416 wounded, including four French nationals.

Although an investigation has been launched to find out the cause of the accident, there have been no conclusive results yet. Evidence suggests that the train T195 was moving far beyond the speed limit before the derailment. It was at 4:41 am, April 28, that the rear part of the train rolled off its track, with some rail cars blocking the way of the 5034 train coming in the opposite direction on a neighboring track.

Some online voices have suggested that the accident would have been less devastating if there had been better communication between the two trains, enabling the 5034 train take precautions, because it was the collision rather than the derailment that caused most of the casualties.

China's "Harmony" Bullet

TrainThe accident is reminiscent of an earlier one which, coincidentally, took place on the same railway between Qingdao and Jinan. On January 21, a high-speed bullet train traveling from Beijing to Qingdao killed 18 rail workers who were working on the tracks. Experts say the workers were pulled under the wheels by the air flow caused by the bullet train travelling at a speed greater than 200 km/h.

The director and the party chief of Jinan railway bureau were both sacked and put under investigation immediately after this latest accident. The role they played in the situation is still unclear, but it seems curious that after the previous accident, Chen Gong not only got away unscathed but was elected as representative to this year's NPC instead.

There's some online speculation that says that unlike last time, the latest accident is too big an embarrassment for the central government, because the upcoming Olympic Games might be affected.

Speed is an important consideration on China's railways. To tackle capacity shortages, China's railway system has raised the speed of trains. According to Xinhua:

China had raised train speeds six times as of April 2007, with railways allowing a speed of more than 200 km per hour totaling 6,227 km. By 2020, the length of such high-speed railways is forecast to reach 18,000 km and high-speed services will cover 50,000 km, serving 90 percent of China's population.