New Delhsi: At a time when India is still in the planning stage for bringing in High Speed Rail (HSR) network in the country, neighbouring China has embarked upon an ambitious plan to take its HSR length to 28,000 km, two- fold of the total global network, in the next four years.
"Railways is one of the sectors in which India was previously more advanced than China. In early 1980s, China lagged behind India in both total length and length of electrified routes. But faster expansion in China has turned it around. By 1996, China led India in total length and by 2001 in electrified routes," a study by IIFL, institutional equities division of India Infoline, stated.
"China`s HSR network is shaping up at an extraordinary speed. The country saw its first experimental HSR in operation in 2003, but by 2014, it would have reached 28,000 km in length - twice as large as similar networks in the rest of the world combined," the study said.
"The HSR will shrink travel time from North to South of the country by an estimated 65 percent and from East to West by 75 percent. In other words China will collapse to only 9 percent of its current size as measured by travel time," it added.
The country plans to spend USD 500 billion on HSR by 2014. On the contrary, India is still to build HSR and investment planned is much low.
PTI
