China Rail on a Long Roll

I recently read a nice article in Business Standard by Raghu Dayal about how India can draw some lessons from the high level of progress achieved by China's Rail system. Some of the statistics presented in the article are:

In 1990-91: India had 62367 route Kms of lines against 57889 for China. By 2007-2008 India managed to increase the figure to 63273 Route Kms while China grew to 77966 route Kms overtaking India.India doubled its electrified route Kms from 1990 to 2008 while China quadrapuled it in the same time frame. But Chinese Railways trailed Indian Railways technologically until the 1980s

China today is the World's second largest freight railway system and the largest passenger system. China has the highest traffic density measured in passenger-km and ton-km per km of line which is 10.5 times the world average.

China relied on high techology and a judicious mix of passenger routes running at 200 Kmph and freight routes running at 120 Kmph to overtake India. The lines/trains with the 80-100 Kmph limits have been upgraded to 160-200 kmph on popular corridors. In 2008, the 300 kmph EMU was inaugurated. China Rail is currently constructing 350 kmph high speed passenger dedicated lines(PDLs) whihc is estimated to crisscross 16000 route kms by 2020.

for the complete article see:
http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=398722