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Reports about Sichuan-Tibet railway construction untrue: MOR

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-09-02 15:04

The Ministry of Railway denied recent media reports that the construction of the Sichuan-Tibet railway will begin this month, according to People Daily’s website people.com.cn.

The reports said the ministry would invest an estimated 53.78 billion yuan ($7.86 billion) over eight years in the project. The new train line would have taken just eight hours to travel the 1,629 kilometers between Chengdu and Lhasa.

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An anonymous ministry official said the Sichuan-Tibet railway project was only just added to China’s middle-and-long term railway construction plan last year, and so it is still in its planning stage.

A number of challenging geographic obstacles stand in the way of the railroad’s construction, including frozen earth, land and rock slides, cold weather and a lack of oxygen due to high-altitudes in some parts. As a result, some experts said the total cost of the railway may reach 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion).

There are currently two ways to get from Chengdu to Lhasa: driving on the Number 318 national highway which takes three days, or taking a train from Chengdu to Shaanxi to Qinghai and finally on to Lhasa, which takes about 45 hours in total.