Friends of the Rail Forum

China steps up train safety amid anger after crash

Amid public fury over the fatal 23 July collision, Wen Jiabao suspends new railway projects and orders safety checks

Reuters in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 August 2011 16.34 BST

China plans to suspend new railway project approvals and launch safety checks on existing equipment to address growing public concern following a deadly crash between two high-speed trains last month.

The government has struggled to address public fury over the 23 July crash near the booming coastal city of Wenzhou that killed at least 40 people after one high-speed train apparently rammed into another one stranded on the track, prompting question marks over technology promoted as a symbol of the nation's growing prowess.

Chinese premier Wen Jiabao told the state council, China's cabinet, that checks will be conducted on the quality of equipment, the design and staff training on existing high-speed projects and those under construction, according to state radio.

China should "appropriately reduce the average speed of new high-speed trains at their early stage of operation", Wen said.

Wen visited the site in late July and vowed a thorough and transparent investigation.

A Chinese railway research institute has taken responsibility for a flaw in signalling equipment as the cause of the crash.

Extensive Report Blames Chinese Train Crash On Corruption And Substandard Equipment

Robert Johnson | Aug. 5, 2011, 7:42 AM |
Business Insider

On July 23 China's high-speed rail system suffered a severe blow when two trains collided on the tracks in a thunderstorm killing 40 people and wounding 200.

Investigative Chinese news site Caixin published the most detailed account of the incident so far calling it "a systematic breakdown for railway operations and management in China ... a breakdown that began with a no-holds barred race to build high-speed railways." Following are some highlights from Caixin's five-page story.

The fast train D301 came upon train D3115 after it was told to slow down by a control station in far-away Shanghai who was getting "red-light zone" messages. Unseen by train engineers, this warning is what D301 should have been receiving.

The red-light zone message implied either mechanical failure or a slower moving train ahead, despite this the Shanghai dispatcher allowed D3115 to move ahead slowly -- just as it began to roll it was slammed from behind by D301 at full speed.

Red-light zones are a problem for dispatchers who receive bonuses by keeping trains on time and D301's dispatcher was trying to make up for lost time.

D3115's dispatcher told the train it could go no faster than 20 mph when just moments before dispatchers from the same office told D3115 to speed up to 120 mph.

Experts say that train engineers require three months of training to become proficient. The Chinese ministry allows only ten days.

Japan took 10 years to build its 100-kilometer line and China has built several thousand kilometers in the same amount of time.

State-owned monopoly, China Railway Signal & Communication, integrated the signal system on that rail section and 57 others Nationwide -- the company is corrupt, nepotism and substandard products are common.

After the dispatcher failed and the signaling equipment failed on July 23, an automatic backup safety system failed as well.

Unveiled in 2007 the entire system was called a rear-end collision prevention system that would always keep two trains at least five minutes apart.

Decisions not to open some cars to rescue survivors was based on a life detector that failed to find a two-year-old girl found alive more than 20 hours later.

Officials turned several hundred villagers away offering help -- resuming rail traffic was the priority.

When China Railway officials arrived nine-hours later they brought a crane and backhoes to immediately bury the damaged cars.

Pressured by the public and the media, the cars were dug back up for the currently ongoing investigation.

China recalls bullet trains in safety scare

Public anger as China's rail industry suffers fresh blow only weeks after 40 killed in high-speed crash

guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 August 2011 07.55 BST

China's second-biggest trainmaker is to recall 54 bullet trains used on the new showcase Beijing-Shanghai line for safety reasons, dealing a fresh blow to the nation's rail system.

The recall of the trains by China CNR Corp Ltd comes three weeks after 40 people were killed in a high-speed rail crash, which triggered public fury, unusually bold media coverage and a freeze on approvals for new railway projects.

China's high-speed rail drive was until recently held up by senior government officials as a symbol of the nation's technological prowess. Now it has become a political albatross, drawing scorn from many citizens already frustrated with the hulking railways ministry.

China's fast-growing microblog websites have served to amplify public anger, and the recall drew more catcalls on the popular Weibo site.

"Wasn't this locomotive the most advanced type, and put into use only after many tests? So how come the problems were discovered after they were put into operation? What a miracle," wrote one Weibo user.

"Can we also recall the Ministry of Railways?," asked another.

Officials blamed July's crash first on a lightning strike and then on faulty signals technology. But on Friday Chinese media quoted a senior investigator as saying the crash also exposed management failings and could have been avoided.

"There were serious flaws in the system design that led to an equipment failure," said Luo Lin, the minister of China's State Administration of Work Safety, who is leading the investigation.

"At the same time, this exposed problems in emergency response and safety management after the failure occurred," the Beijing Times cited Luo as saying.

"This was a major accident involving culpability that could have been totally avoided," he said.

Industry analyst Lu Zhou said the recalls added to signs that China's high-speed railway boom faced bleak times.

"The government is putting a sudden brake on China's high-speed railway story, and we must wait for the bad days to pass over," said Lu, an analyst with Everbright Securities in Shanghai.

"A Great Leap Forward-style movement in China's high-speed railway is changing abruptly to a period of silence, and that could last a few years," he said.

The Great Leap Forward was Mao Zedong's disastrous effort in the late 1950s to catapult China into communist prosperity.

But China could not afford to curtail train investment in the longer-term, said Luo.

"After all, China's railway system can't go back to the old days of shabby green cars."