Foreigners are not allowed to drive in China. But if you really want to, then you can illegally.

My friend and I traveled around the Celestial Empire by car, and drove 13 thousand kilometers.

I want to show how the roads in China are arranged and why they will soon overtake America.

1 Five years ago I traveled in the USA. It was a huge two-month route, alone behind the wheel, I drove 20 thousand kilometers, from Detroit to Detroit. I spent long hours behind the steering wheel, studying the arrangement of roads, exits, highway numbering and watching the behavior of drivers.
Then there was a big report. It seemed to me that the United States had the best roads in the world, but how else could it be in a country with such distances?

2 In China, they are even larger. Well, what about the roads? If in the USA they are sung in cinema and music, the legendary Route 66 alone is worth something, then what is in China remains a mystery even to most tourists who come to the country. Here's what I'll say - they have not just caught up, but have already surpassed America and the rest of the world. Where others cut tunnels in the rocks, the Chinese put piles. Dozens and hundreds of kilometers of roads on concrete pillars. Sometimes the trails run right along the riverbed.

3 China is a country of advanced development. Have you seen their ghost towns? I myself am talking about how entire million-plus cities stand empty waiting for tenants who may arrive in ten years. But the Chinese are doing it now, because they can now, and then - it is not known. It's the same with roads. This photo was taken in the foothills of Tibet, where there are a couple of hundred inhabitants in two villages, and they ride donkeys. But the road was built, also with lanterns and a wide sidewalk!

4 The most complex interchanges, grandiose engineering structures, all this delights!

5 We traveled for almost a month. Every day we spent six to twelve hours behind the wheel. And almost everywhere there were excellent highways. And where it was not, they were built there at that very moment. Large-scale road construction has been launched in the most remote areas. No one knows about it, does not write or talk about it, because it is not available to foreigners.

6 To drive legally in China, you need to get a local license and have a local registration in order to pass the exam for these rights. A tourist will never rent a car. A year ago, I received a letter from a man named Valikhan: he said that he was reading my blog, and in his notes about Japan he saw me mention my dream - to drive a car through the wilds of China. It turns out that Valikhan also had such a dream, with the only difference that he has been living in Beijing for ten years, has a license and a car, and of course, speaks fluent Chinese.

7 Should I say that I caught fire? We began to communicate, come up with a route, and a month later he was already meeting me at the Beijing airport. Everything was ready for the trip, and straight from the airport parking lot we went to Inner Mongolia, it's a ten hour journey.

8 There were many stories about China later, you can read them to buy my book "". Now I will continue the story about the road.

9 If the roads are ALREADY good, the drivers are YET not so good. The Chinese travel very little, very little themselves over long distances, for this there are high-speed trains and planes, they are also well developed. The main transport on highways is trucks. And truckers are a specific people.

10 They have their own ideas about the rules of the road and a kind of driver's ethics. For example, it is indecent to overtake a colleague and move back to the right lane, so you need to drive in the left lane at the same speed and wait for the other driver to slow down himself, as if politely giving way. Cars in the back? God, what nonsense!

11 The road builders also have a peculiar sense of humor.

12 The most interesting China is where there is no asphalt and freeways. There are fewer and fewer places like this.

13 This is the exception rather than the rule.

14 When they pave the way, they do it well and with a reserve for the future. High-quality asphalt and lights, even in remote areas. The right philosophy is better to do now than not to do later.

15 Sometimes this approach looks comical. In Russia, I saw exactly the opposite picture, there was a road, bam - and no.

16 Each province in the country has its own rules of the road. There can be a lot of differences, starting from the speed limit. And each lane can have its own speed.

17 It happens that everything is the same, cars 120 with a minimum of 60, buses and trucks - no more than 90.

18 It happens that the left lane is used only for overtaking, it is impossible to drive on it. But often the opposite is true, for example, only cars keep to the left lane, only trucks get to the right. Or even more sophisticated, in the left everyone goes, but faster, in the right, too, everything, but more slowly. And if you are driving on an empty road in the right lane 120, you can be stopped by the police: violated!

19 Of course, the road infrastructure and its design are different.

20 Traffic lights, intersections, even signs can be different.

21 In America, too, there are differences between the states, but not so big.

22 Is it difficult to travel in China without understanding the characters? A considerable part of the indexes is generally duplicated in English.

23 At the same time, an English translation is also found.

24 You will still be driving on navigators, so you won’t get lost.

25 In addition to the usual road signs, there is “social propaganda” on the roadsides, which urges people not to drive when they are tired.

26 Or explain that arguing with your wife while driving can cause an accident.

27 But traveling in China without Chinese is almost impossible, you won’t be able to communicate even with the hotel staff, let alone find the right hotel: to accommodate foreigners, you need a separate license, many do not have it. Google and Booking in the outback are not helpers, you need to use local software. At the same time, if there are those who are interested, we are thinking with Valikhan to make a tour for a small group next year. In a China that no one else will show.

28 Do you like Chinese roads? Good ones, right? There is one nuance - almost all high-speed highways are paid. Moreover, they are seriously paid, the cost of travel on them is slightly less than the cost of gasoline that you spend on the road.

29 Payment points are beautiful, and do not look alike.

30 Regional peculiarities decide. In Mongolia, these will be yurts, in Tibet, stupas, and in the city of Chengdu, where the largest panda nursery in the country - you yourself understand.

31 Police. There are few on the roads. Law enforcement officers appear only if something happened.

32 But their mobile posts are near every toll booth on the highways.

33 And here's where it's important not to get caught. Cars are stopped selectively, just like that, to check documents. If Valikhan had complete order with them, then I didn’t! There were international laws, in which, although it is written that they operate in China, in China itself they do not know about it. One day we got pulled over while I was driving, and that's what it was.

34 In other villages you will find old empty roadblocks and checkpoints, but they no longer work.

35 China has changed a lot in the last decade, just along with the roads. And it will continue to change.

36 In general, the police here do not give a nightmare to drivers, and are more involved in education than punishment.

37 Why spoil your own karma and add work? Punitive functions on the roads are performed by impartial cameras.

38 There are many of them. So many. Hidden and explicit, measuring speed, checking registration, monitoring lanes.

39 But the camera has a big advantage: it doesn't care that you're a foreigner.

40 Cameras are installed even in remote villages in the foothills of Tibet. And there is no getting away from it.

41 Gas stations. When you're on a long journey, it's not just a place to stop to pour gas and drain yourself. This is the whole world. One could write a separate story about filling complexes in China, but I won’t.

42 Incidentally, Shell is the only international brand on the country's roads, and that was the only gas station I met.

43 Chinese gas stations are strange. It's either empty...

44 Or thick. In the worst case, you will even be poured gasoline from a tank, at best, they will feed you, put you to bed and still dance.

45 This is also a gas station, for example.

46 And now, my favorite. Lounge areas at Chinese gas stations. Ready to take a look inside?

47 Don't be scared! We didn’t see toilets like that often, we just started our journey with a poor and unkempt Inner Mongolia.

48 Usually latrines are such grandiose buildings that it is indecent to call them even toilets. Urination Palace!

49 So that no one stood in line, the Chinese slapped a hundred booths at each gas station. A company of soldiers can write at the same time!

50 There was a mistake with the washbasins, in the morning there was a line of people who wanted to brush their teeth.

51 I could say a lot more about the roads in China, but this post is already too long. So you ask what you want to know and I will answer.

Throughout Russia, along with the snow, asphalt melted in the spring. The authorities for the hundredth time will begin to "master the budget", laying asphalt in the snow, some in the mud, and someone will start laying asphalt in the rain. Naturally, such asphalt will fall apart in a few months, and the road will have to be repaired again. Everyone must have heard - what wonderful roads in Europe. So let's find out how they make roads using the example of the Czech Republic.

So, what are the components of quality roads in the Czech Republic? Let's start.

Point one
1) Contracts are prohibited. Only the company that won the tender makes the road. That is, you cannot win a tender and then re-order asphalt laying in another company.

Point two
2) Roads are divided into 4 classes (categories). Accordingly, each category is assigned a guarantee. If the road fell apart, the company repairs the road at its own expense.
1. Pedestrian paths in parks, squares, house paths. 5 years
2. Rural roads and other lightly loaded roads. 7 years.
3. Regional roads connecting cities. 8 years.
4. Federal, heavily loaded roads. 10 years.

Third paragraph
3) Firms have a rating from 1 to 4, according to the categories of roads.
The construction and repair of roads is an activity subject to licensing. To obtain a license, a company must have equipment on its balance sheet (i.e., its own equipment) plus a certain number of personnel, incl. trained, with diplomas. Everyone starts from grade 1, i.e. all new firms have the right to make only paths in parks. Upgrading is possible only after the successful completion of the warranty period. To increase the class, the company needs to buy additional equipment and hire additional staff. If during the warranty period the road falls apart, the company is obliged to repair the road at its own expense. In the case when the road falls apart, the company may not be promoted in class, or even lowered altogether, or the license may be taken away altogether and blacklisted. Firms value the license and classiness, tk. if they cheat, they will no longer have orders. Road building companies are usually 20-50 years old. In tenders, the price and guarantee are of primary importance, the company can only increase the state guarantee period. Let's say instead of 5 years to appoint 7 years.
Suppose:
1 class - 1 ice rink 5 people
Grade 2 - 2 rollers, grader, scraper, asphalt paver, grizzly, 15 people
Grade 3 - 3 rollers, 2 vibratory rollers, grader, scraper, 2 asphalt pavers, 2 sprinklers, 30 people
Grade 4 - 5 rollers, 4 vibratory rollers, 2 graders, 2 scrapers, 4 pavers, 4 sprinklers 60 people

Fourth and fifth paragraph
4) Public control. The laying of the road is monitored by 3 third-party observers: one from the local government (like our senior at home), the second from the local automobile union (something our NGOs like blue buckets, only there are a lot of them and they are in every village), 3rd from the road union, (committee, something like that). Each representative is given a protocol, if at least ONE representative justifiably does not like the way the road was laid or repaired, the company is obliged to redo this section at its own expense.
5) Roads are built and repaired in the summer, companies follow the weather forecast. For laying asphalt in the rain - the license is taken away.

Sixth and seventh paragraph
6) Pothole repairs, if any, are allowed only as a temporary and involuntary measure. Gnawing holes and filling them with asphalt should be done in ONE day. At the same time, the walls and bottom of the hole in the old asphalt are heated with a special burner so that the new asphalt adheres better to the old one. A few weeks later, the patched section of the road is completely repaired, stripping the asphalt down to gravel and laying a new one. The joints of the old and new sections are heated with a special burner to a plastic state so that there is no noticeable border.
7) During the repair, the road is COMPLETELY blocked. Motorists use duplicate routes, there are many of them.

China

In China, more than half of the roads are made of concrete. Whether concrete is cheaper, or concrete is more durable, both options are suitable for us in Russia.

And finally
It is strange and incomprehensible that in Russia, despite the budget losses of billions of rubles due to bad roads, nothing has changed in 25 years of modern history.
Why annually allocate money to officials for the repair and construction of roads if they screw up EVERY year and make g@vno and not roads? Why don't such regions that are able to build roads cut off funding? If you don't know how to manage money - next year you will get 0. Let those who CAN make roads get the money.
Let's say in Omsk broken roads, despite the annual injections. - so Omsk should not receive money for road repairs at all, tk. officials show their incompetence in this matter. This money should be received by the region that can make roads and make roads in Omsk.

What is the point of our Ministry of Internal Affairs, FSB, GRU, FSO, prosecutor's office, accounting chamber and other supervisory and special departments and services if they cannot control such a simple and well-established process as road construction ??? You yourself drive on these roads ble @ t !!!
P.S. Asphalt is made from oil, sand and gravel. We are an oil power! We have a lot of oil and gravel!!! Where are the roads???

annotation

The article introduces China's achievements in railway construction over the past 15 years. The results of the technical re-equipment and reconstruction of old roads, the implementation of the ambitious project of the national network of high-speed highways, the unique experience of building the highest mountain railway to Tibet are described. The problems of development and operation of highways, their engineering protection are considered.

Today's China is a unique phenomenon among the major states of the world, markedly out of the ordinary. If the global trend is stabilization and even a slight decrease in the total length of railways, then in China there is now a rapid, or rather explosive, development of the railway transport infrastructure. And not just development, but also the creation of whole new transport subsystems.

In 2002, the length of the country's railways was less than 60 thousand km, in 2014 it already reached 103 thousand km. At the turn of 2012-2013, China also came out on top in the electrification of trunk lines, ahead of the former leader, Russia. Dramatically increased the average speed on conventional - slow - highways, where in 1997-2014. there were about eight systematic increases in the permitted sectional speeds. Railway lines in outlying provinces are also being built in a forced manner, increasing the country's transport connectivity. A unique project has been implemented for laying a high-mountain railway line to previously isolated Tibet - the so-called Qinghai-Tibet Railway, half of the length of which runs at an altitude of over 3 km.

The enormous volume of road construction has made China a leader in the construction of artificial structures: over the past 15 years (2000-2014), such grandiose objects have been built there, such as the Danyang-Kushan viaduct 164.8 km long, the Tianjin viaduct 113.7 km long, several tunnels over 10 km long, two sea ferry crossings, several dozen bridges over large rivers. In this area, the Chinese have also accumulated considerable and valuable experience.

It must be said right away that such an accelerated development of the transport infrastructure in the country is not a chaotic process, but represents the implementation of quite specific plans, approved and corrected approximately every five years at the next congresses of the CPC. Financing of these projects is carried out mainly centrally, through the issuance of state obligations (bonds), and the main burden is placed on state-controlled joint-stock companies.

One of the main elements of the planned development of railways is the plan to build a network of dedicated (separate from the regular network) high-speed lines, HSR. It was named "Plan 4+4" because of its geographic configuration.

Multi-level connection of low-speed lines to the main HSR (Nanjing)

Ambitious "Plan 4 + 4"

The 4+4 Plan was approved in 2004 as China's first high-speed rail development program. Basically, it was originally a system of four vertical (from north to south) and four horizontal (from east to west) lines. Later, it was supplemented with new branches and connecting lines, but the frame of the highways looked exactly like that.

What was supposed to be built according to this ambitious plan?

Vertical highways (meridional) should:

1. Connect the capital of the country with northern Manchuria: the Beijing-Harbin line with a branch line to the Kwantung Peninsula to the port of Dalian.
2. Connect the two main cities of China: Beijing and Shanghai, plus a parallel highway closer to the East China Sea - Tianjin-Shenyang.
3. To lay a highway to the South along the shortest route: Beijing-Wuhan-Guangzhou with the prospect of extending to Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
4. Connect all economically active southern provinces from Shanghai via Ningbo and Fuzhou to Shenzhen with a coastal high-speed line, where it connected with the meridional axis No. 3.

Horizontal highways (latitudinal) should:

1. Connect the port of Qingdao with the inland industrial center of Taiyuan through the Beijing Industrial Region.
2. Connect the Yellow River Valley with the remote western mountainous Xinjiang - Xuzhou-Lanzhou-Urumqi (the longest and strategically important).
3. Lay a through line along the Yangtze Valley and its industrial centers: from the port of Shanghai through the megacities of Wuhan and Chongqing to Chengdu.
4. Lay a line to the mountainous regions of southwest China, adjacent to the countries of Southeast Asia: from the port of Shanghai through Changsha to the capital of Yunnan Province, Kunming.

Thus, China would extend its "high-speed tentacles" to almost all areas of the country, and the lines would allow a passenger (businessman, tourist, civil servant) to reach any point within this configuration in less than 12 hours. The unit of measurement was precisely the hours of travel to any point, everything was calculated in them. For example, from Beijing to Shanghai, the average travel time was reduced from 14 to 5 hours, from Harbin to Beijing from 15 to 5.5 hours, etc.

The construction of such a network made it possible to significantly accelerate economic activity in China, to involve new layers of the hitherto inactive population from the hinterland into the economy, and to promote the formation of new enterprises in various industries. These factors were discussed in some detail in an article by Zhu Ying in Kommersant (for details, see http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2602194).

Reconstruction and technical re-equipment of conventional lines

But not only the construction of the HSR network was supposed to transform the railways of the Celestial Empire. Other processes were going on in parallel:

• Construction of new lines of the usual type (cargo-passenger universal), mainly in remote and outlying areas.
• Comprehensive reconstruction of the main main corridors of the country in order to increase their throughput and section speeds, which also reduced the travel time.
• Electrification of highways in order to increase their capacity and average weight of trains, as well as improve the environmental situation, which is extremely important for this country.

In 2013, China overtook Russia in terms of the length of electrified lines and came out on top in the world (48 thousand km, now more). This happened after the commissioning of the Harbin-Dalian high-speed railway. Electrification there began only in 1958, and it took China a little more than half a century to achieve the world championship in the length of electrified railways.

In the "zero" two sea ferry railway crossings were put into operation: through the Qunzhou Strait (connection of the mainland and Hainan Island in Haikou, length 33 km) and through the Bohai Strait between the ports of Yantai (Shandong Province) and Dalian (Liaoning) 57 km long. In addition, large tunnels were built, comparable to Severomuysky in Russia, such as Qinglin (18.5 km, on the new Xian-Ankang line), Dayoshansky (14.4 km, on the Hengyang-Guangzhou line). More than a dozen tunnels with a length of 5 to 10 km were built.

Since 1997, a comprehensive reconstruction of the main highways of the country and technical re-equipment of the rolling stock fleet have been consistently carried out. This process was multifaceted and included many related processes. On its components, I believe, it is worth dwelling in more detail.

Development and implementation of high-speed rolling stock. This was the first major event in the overall rearmament sequence. For enough a short time(7–8 years) by the beginning of the 2000s, several new series of locomotives and wagons were developed and tested, designed to operate on existing lines at speeds up to 160–200 km/h. For example, electric locomotives of the SS7D and SS9 series, diesel locomotives of the DF4 series, passenger cars of the 25K family of various classes, including double-deck ones.

Then, in the early 2000s, it was the turn to modernize the basic infrastructure on the main trunk corridors, involving large capital costs that were impossible in the conditions of the 1990s. It included the following activities:

• laying of jointless rail lashes and elimination of short rails with a large number of joints;
• replacement of railroad switches with high-speed ones;
• re-laying of tracks in order to eliminate curves of a small radius, where the movement of trains at high speed was unacceptable;
• softening the overall track profile to reduce the number of sections with steep ascents and descents;
• replacement of old wooden sleepers with reinforced concrete ones;
• reconstruction of overpasses and small bridges;
• the introduction of soil reinforcement in railway construction and the transition from passive retention to active strengthening of the track structure (driving rods, reinforcing embankments using geotextiles or geogrids);
• installation of protective fences and elimination of crossings with parallel construction of road crossings at different levels;
• improvement of the locomotive signaling system and the widespread introduction of automatic blocking.

An important aspect of the work to increase speeds was to ensure the safety of train traffic at a high level.

And here, too, multifaceted engineering solutions were required: it was necessary to ensure constant monitoring of the state of technical means, regardless of their location, and the information necessary for making a decision had to come immediately at any time. Through trial and error, Chinese railroad workers came up with the cross-use of the three monitoring systems.

The floor system measures the transverse forces in the interaction of wheels and rails during the passage of the train. At the same time, data is collected synchronously from vibration, displacement and speed sensors, as well as their analysis in real time. The system equipment could be installed at any critical point on the track, and an alarm signal could be received at the train control center within 10 seconds.

The mobile system (based on the GJ-4 high-speed track inspection car) is based on the use of equipment that uses inertial orientation and semiconductor laser measurement technologies in combination with automatic binding to a specific location. The main parameters of the track can be measured and recorded while the car is moving at a speed of up to 160 km/h.

The critical track point monitoring system (based on the track stiffness measuring car) allows measuring and recording the track stiffness value at approaches to bridges and at transition sections, crossings, in areas of turnouts and other critical places when driving at speeds up to 40 km/h . The use of such a car makes it possible to control the state of critical points of highways, identify possible problems at an early stage and correctly choose the type of track superstructure during its future reconstruction.

As you can see, the course of implementation of the multi-stage program to increase the speed of movement has put China's railways into the ranks of the leaders. Now, on the main corridors between the largest economic centers of the country, there is a mixed movement of high-speed passenger (up to 160 km / h) and heavy freight trains (up to 100 km / h and 5000 tons of train weight) on the same intensively operated hauls. That in itself is an extraordinary achievement.

The fastest HSR train Beijing-Shanghai G1 travels 1318 km in 4 hours 45 minutes

Beginning and active stage of implementation of the 4+4 Plan

The first sign of the "4 + 4 Plan" was a rather short road (117 km), built between the two largest, closely located agglomerations - the Beijing Capital and Tianjin, located on the shores of the Bohai Bay. The Beijing-Tianjin intercity railway was built for the 2008 Olympic Games and was characterized by all the main features of a dedicated high-speed line, which will later become familiar on other similar lines:

• a route completely separate from ordinary lines, closed with protective fences or placed on overpasses at the intersections of some objects;
• without single-level intersections with other lines and roads on the way;
• specialization - it carries out only high-speed passenger traffic without conventional trains, and even more so freight ones;
• under it, a separate new terminal station was built in Beijing (South Station) and special tracks were allocated at the Tianjin Main Station.

CRH3 trains were put on the line, reaching speeds of up to 330 km / h (later the speed was reduced to 300). The average trip in time has been reduced by a factor of three - from the previous one and a half hours to 28 minutes. 60 pairs of trains (!) plus 2 track-measuring trains now run along it a day. Trains do not run at night.

After the opening of this first small line, a curious pattern was revealed: high-speed communication includes in the process of transport exchange new segments of the population who had not previously regularly traveled outside their cities (2007 - 8.3 million people, in the first year of the road's existence - 18.7 million ). The increase in passengers was noticeably higher than the total number of passengers on the railway and buses a year and a half earlier.

In parallel with the commissioning of the first line and the testing of the main solutions in real operation, the accelerated construction of other, longer main high-speed lines began. First of all, from Beijing to the north - to Manchuria, to the south - to Wuhan and Guangzhou, and also to the southeast - to the largest metropolis of the country, Shanghai.

The 1318 km Beijing-Shanghai high-speed line after construction (April 2008–November 2010) overturned another postulate of transport communication, which was previously considered unshakable: that high-speed lines are profitable and attract passengers at distances from 300 to 1000 km, and with a length of more than 1000 km, a mass passenger begins to prefer aviation.

This turned out to be completely different: despite the preservation of the usual railway line to Shanghai and the presence of intensive air and bus traffic, tens of millions of people moved to this line, plus there were several million “newcomers” who had not previously traveled outside their regions. Travel time from the capital to Shanghai by train has been reduced from 12-14 hours to 5 or even 4 hours and 45 minutes. For half a year after the opening (2011), the line transported 24.5 million people, and 4 years later (2015) it transported 56.3 million people for the first half of the year.

During the construction of the line, numerous artificial structures were also built - 244 bridges, several long overpass viaducts (including the world's largest Danyang-Kunshan viaduct 165 km long), 22 tunnels with a total length of 16 km. Most of this highway (about 80% of the length) was built using ballastless technology. Many innovations that are now familiar to Chinese high-speed lines were tested on it.

The line is very popular: now an average of 290 (!) trains with different terminal stations run on it daily. Trains depart from Beijing to Shanghai approximately every 15 minutes. Along it there are 11 cities with a population of over 1 million people, which also generate their own passenger traffic. Thanks to its discovery, the interaction between the economic zone of the Bohai Bay and the coastal zone of the Yangtze Delta has significantly intensified.

In 2010–2015 other lines were also built according to the 4 + 4 Plan (see Fig. 3). Of the significant milestones in the implementation of this plan, it is worth mentioning the following projects:

The line to Manchuria and the Kwantung Peninsula (Beijing / Dalian-Shenyang-Harbin), which was built partly in cold areas where temperatures drop to -40 0C in winter and special measures are required to compensate for the temperature impact on the track. There, high-speed trains run at different seasonal speeds (up to 300 km/h in summer, up to 200 km/h in winter). For this line, CRH380B type trains have been developed adapted to the movement in cold regions.

The world's longest high-speed line to the south (Beijing-Guangzhou-Shenzhen) with a length of more than 2300 km, introduced at the end of December 2012. A direct high-speed train of category G from Beijing to Guangzhou overcomes 2300 km in 8.5–9 hours. By the way, this distance is almost equivalent to the Moscow–Omsk distance.

HSR along the Yangtze Valley (Shanghai-Wuhan-Chongqing-Chengdu, length about 2100 km), laid in difficult mountainous areas with dozens of tunnels and high-water bridges across the Yangtze and other large rivers. Not completed in one section (Chongqing-Wanzhou), completion expected in 2015

The Hainan high-speed semicircle (Sanya-Haikou HSR, about 300 km long) was built in the tropics with high humidity and partly mountainous terrain. The line is isolated from the main HSR network.

The implementation of the plan continues before our eyes, and every six months there are reports about the commissioning of some new high-speed sections - powerful building columns created for the project do not stand idle.

Growth problems and the 2011 crisis

Like any large complex project with many stages, the "4 + 4 Plan" did not escape the crisis phenomena of network growth, a kind of "childhood illness". During the accelerated construction of new lines after the first outstanding successes (“Olympic Line” to Tianjin - 2008, the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed ​​Line with grandiose artificial structures - 2010), Chinese railways experienced “dizziness from success”.

The speed of traffic on the newly commissioned lines reached 340-350 km/h, attention to traffic safety for the sake of reducing the travel time was somewhat weakened, the algorithms for checking the condition of the lines were not improved, and the retribution was not long in coming.

On July 23, 2011, two trains traveling along the Shanghai–Fuzhou Highway Coastal Line collided on an overpass in the suburbs of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. One train entered the tail of the second at a speed of about 100 km/h. Both trains derailed and several carriages fell off the overpass. 40 people died and 192 were injured, for a total of about 1,600 people on both trains at the time of the crash. The crash was called the "Zhejiang catastrophe" and caused a great resonance in society; Chinese officials and experts were sharply criticized.

This emergency had a "cold shower" effect on the initial euphoria of the introduction of the HSR. At first, in the course of the investigation, the railway workers tried to attribute the blame to natural factors (lightning during a severe thunderstorm actually struck a signaling device on the line, which was disabled, turning off the auto-lock on this block section). However, in the course of further investigation, already under the control of the PRC government, a serious impact of the human factor was also revealed, namely, the fuzzy organization of traffic control, the poor quality of dispatch control and poor control over signaling equipment.

After this incident, the construction of high-speed railways in China was temporarily (though not for long) suspended while the causes of the accident were investigated. The speed limit was lowered everywhere: on the 1st class lines (G) - from 350 to 300 km / h, and on the 2nd class lines (C and D) - from 230-250 to 200-220 km / h. The traffic schedule was promptly revised, it introduced small reserves of time for being late and surge. Starting from the end of 2011, drivers were allowed to reach speeds of 310 km/h in permitted sections only if they deviated from the schedule by more than 10 minutes, and after entering the schedule, the limit for normal traffic remained at 300 km/h. In case of deviation from these standards, both the drivers and site managers were subjected to large fines. The responsibility of dispatchers for compliance with the schedule has been tightened. New standards have been developed and implemented, establishing a larger axial distance between the tracks and a higher radius of curvature and horizontal and vertical alignments.

In addition, the Zhejiang disaster led to numerous resignations and the final fall of the "architect of the Chinese high-speed lines" - Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun. He was detained even before the accident on charges of corruption, but after it new serious episodes were added to his case. He was accused of illegally raising operating speed limits and squeezing railroad construction schedules that affected traffic safety.

Curiously, Minister Liu (2003-2011), who was arrested in 2011, is actually the architect of the 4+4 Plan and the engine behind the modernization of China's railways. Colossal sums flowed through him - 80 billion dollars a year, during his tenure powerful engineering companies were created and gained strength, which are now carrying out the process of modernizing the railways of the Middle Kingdom.

And by mid-2011, with its vigorous “no brakes” policy, with an emphasis on records, it led the rapidly growing system of high-speed lines to the most significant crisis. The Zhejiang catastrophe predetermined the final downfall of Liu: in May 2012 he was expelled from the party, in June 2013 he went to trial, in the fall of 2013 he was sentenced to capital punishment with a two-year suspension of execution.

These are far from all the problems of China's high-speed railways. Too high fares, the accumulation of debts of the Ministry of Railways (now reformed and divided into two parts) and the financial component of this colossal construction are criticized. Corruption is also a problem, which is periodically revealed in this branched economy, through which huge sums of money flow. However, these questions lie outside the scope of this article.

Unique Project: Qinghai-Tibet Railway

Speaking about China's experience in the reconstruction and construction of conventional railways, one cannot fail to mention the unique railway to Tibet, built in just 5 years (2001-2006). The highway began to be built from the city of Xining under Mao, in 1974, however, construction to the station. Golmud (on the Tibetan Plateau) took about 10 years with the help of the army and prisoners. The first 814 km were opened for operation in 1984.

The second, decisive and most difficult, section (1142 km to Lhasa) began to be built after the death of Deng Xiaoping, in 2001. The railway from Golmud rose from a height of 2800 m to the Tang-La pass (5072 m!) Lhasa (3642 m). Approximately 20 thousand workers built the highway simultaneously from two end points and coped with the task in just five years. The construction cost amounted to about 3.7 billion dollars, which is about 6 times cheaper than the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed line mentioned earlier.

There are 45 stations on the mountainous section of the highway from Golmud, 38 of which are automatic, without permanent personnel.

After the completion of construction on this road, several railway construction records were set at once:

• the highest mountain railway tunnel in the world - Fenghuoshan, height above sea level 4900 m;
• the highest railway station in the world - Thang La, 5068 m above sea level;
• the highest point of the highway - 5072 m.

Due to the exceptional height of the route, a special rolling stock was developed for this road. According to the technologies of the General Electric Corporation, diesel locomotives NJ2 with a capacity of 5100 hp were built. s., adapted for work in the highlands. Not only locomotives, but the cars for this line are also built according to a special technology - they are actually hermetically sealed from the environment, oxygen pressure is maintained from the inside, close to the standard one. Also, to prevent altitude sickness, each seat in the car is equipped with individual oxygen tubes. The tinted windows of the carriages have a special coating against excessive solar radiation.

During construction, there were many serious difficulties, including permafrost (about a quarter of the length of the highway). Disturbance of the permafrost layer can lead to the melting of glacial formations, which, in turn, potentially leads to the formation of sinkholes, causing deformation and destruction of the track.

However, engineers found a solution to this set of problems: when laying the canvas and building bridges in this permafrost zone, special technologies were used. The rails are laid on an embankment of cobblestones of a certain size, covered with a layer of sand. The cushion of the canvas has a ventilation layer: the embankment is pierced through with a system of pipes to ensure ventilation, and its slopes are covered with a metal deck that reflects sunlight and thereby prevents it from heating.

On separate sections of the route, special wells filled with liquid nitrogen are provided. They actually freeze the foundation of the canvas, preventing the heating of the upper permafrost layer and its thawing. Using this technology, the canvas was laid on a section of 111 km. The speed limit in this area is 100 km/h.

To compensate for elevation differences in the construction areas, a significant part of the highway was laid along flyovers. In total, 675 bridges were built along the entire route. The overpasses are built on piles, the depth of which, even in the conditions of thawing of the upper layer of permafrost, prevents a negative impact on the stability of the structure. An important advantage of flyover sites is that they do not prevent the free migration of unique species of local animals.

The annual passenger traffic of the line increased from 6.5 million people in 2006 to 11 million people in 2012, and the annual freight traffic accordingly increased from 25 million tons to 56 million tons. Over the decade, it became clear that this highway has decisively accelerated the economic development of Tibet and the neighboring province of Qinghai, and also increased their tourist importance. The cost of delivering goods to Tibet has also become significantly cheaper.

In 2014, an extension of the line from Lhasa to Shigatse (the nearest city to Everest, about 120 km) was opened, 253 km long.

Dedicated high-speed train station Beijing South (built in 2008)

Conclusion

China over the past decade has made tremendous progress in rail transport technology, reconstructed and equipped conventional railways with new technology, built from scratch the world's largest high-speed rail system (now more than 16 thousand km), and has accumulated tremendous experience in operating high-speed express trains despite crises and growth problems. The construction of new lines and further electrification of existing ones are underway. Over 10 years, the total length of the railway network has grown from 60,000 km (2004) to 103,000 km (2014).

In 2012, China's largest center for the development and production of high-speed passenger trains, created by CNR Corporation, was launched in Changchun. The production site (290 thousand km2) has become the largest in terms of scale, advanced equipment and a fully equipped production base in the world. This center is capable of producing annually: 500 wagons for conventional passenger trains, 100 new generation HSR trains (CRH380A), 800–1000 HSR wagons, 1200 wagons for intercity express trains.

Railway management reform is underway: in March 2013, the Ministry of Railways of the People's Republic of China was divided into an administrative (Ministry of Transportation) and a commercial (China General Railway Corporation) structure.

How effective this measure will be remains to be seen. But Chinese railroad workers have picked up a colossal pace and are confidently looking forward - the growth of railway infrastructure, apparently, will continue for quite a long time. And you can learn a lot from them.

The records set by the Chinese for the construction of bridges and roads are impressive. The other day they paved a junction for a new railway station in 9 hours.

1.5 hours - and the bridge is ready

1,500 workers and 23 excavators overnight connected 3 major railway lines to the Nanlong New Line in southern China. At the same time, they not only paved the road, but also installed traffic lights and other means of control along it. As explained Zhang Daosong, Deputy Head of the Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group - Chief Builder of Railways in China, the project was completed in record time due to the fact that the workers were organized into 7 teams that simultaneously performed various tasks. But it is obvious that the secret of Chinese success is not only in smart management.

It's also about technology. So, in 2016, the Chinese deployed two bridges 100 meters long by 90 degrees in 1.5 hours. Huge structures were assembled along the railway track, and then installed perpendicularly on prepared supports. At the same time, the busy highway under the railway tracks did not overlap - everything happened right above the cars.

And in 2015, the Chinese dismantled the old and assembled a new 6-lane road bridge in Beijing in 43 hours. During this time, they also managed to apply markings. For the new surface of the bridge, a 1300-ton structure was needed, which was transported already finished. As the representative of the contractor explained, a new technology of "integrative replacement" was used. Reconstruction in the usual way would have taken at least 2 months, but a key traffic intersection in the northeast of Beijing, connecting the 3rd Ring Road, the airport expressway and Route 101, could not be blocked for so long.

They build in a week what we build in a year

750 m per hour - with such a speed, new roads are being built in the Celestial Empire today. All expressways were built in the last 20 years! How did the "Chinese road miracle" happen and why can't we learn from this experience?

“In terms of construction, China has long overtaken not only us, but the whole world,” AiF explained. President of the Union of Estimators Pavel Goryachkin. - In terms of production of building materials, it is simply out of competition, even the Americans are far behind. A simple example: we produce 79-80 million tons of cement per year, while the Chinese produce more than 1 billion tons! This is a serious indicator, especially since they do not export cement. They build as many roads in a week as we do in a year. We used to laugh at Chinese fakes, and they, like a sponge, absorb all new technologies. Now we are not talking about manual labor, when a million Chinese were rounded up and they dug some kind of pit with shovels. No! We are talking about high-tech construction. Today, the Chinese produce on their territory almost the entire range of necessary construction machinery and equipment. Chinese engineers study at the best universities in the world, train at the best construction sites, and this is supported by the state in every possible way. They understand that construction is one of the locomotives of the economy, which is why they invest. The Chinese are a very hardworking and talented people. Technological solutions show how they are progressing.

And even with the amount of money that we pump into our construction projects, for some reason we can’t work like that. Of course, we can do something: we have modern equipment, the market for building materials is developed, and we have engineers, but... In China, construction is a priority for the state, while in our country, over the past two years, we, the builders, have heard only threats and insults from officials: they say, we don’t need shared construction, all developers are thieves and crooks. Rosstat records a decrease in the volume of produced building materials by 10%. According to the Supreme Arbitration Court, in terms of the number of bankruptcies, builders are in the forefront. How can the industry develop here?!”

We add that in China, government and regional officials are planning how the transport network should grow - taking into account the development of the economy, the direction of freight and passenger traffic, and the growth in the number of cars. A lot of money is allocated for this. But, although the cost of 1 km of a highway in our countries is approximately comparable, in the Celestial Empire they build many times faster and better - the agreed service life of a highway there is 25 years.

The only good news is that our builders already have joint projects with the Chinese. The largest road-building corporations of the Celestial Empire want to invest in Russia, which means that we need to learn and adopt their experience. And not only to engineers and builders, but also to managers.

Express delivery services in China

Our projects

Highways of China

Construction of road infrastructure prior to the opening reform policy

In old China, highways and traffic on them were in an extremely backward state, in 1949 the total length of highways suitable for traffic throughout the country was only 80.7 thousand km, the road density was only 0.8 km／100 km 2 . At the initial stage of the creation of the PRC, having survived the stage of restoration, motor roads received significant development, in 1952 the length of roads amounted to 126.7 thousand km. In the mid and late 50s, based on the needs of economic development and the development of border areas, China began large-scale construction of roads to the border and mountainous regions of the country, the Sichuan-Tibet, Qinghai-Tibet routes were built, as well as in the southeastern, coastal, northeastern and southwestern regions of the country, roads were built for use for defense purposes, the length of roads increased sharply and in 1959 amounted to more than 500 thousand kilometers.

In the 1960s, along with the ongoing large-scale road construction, technical re-equipment was intensified, resulting in a marked increase in the length of roads with a pavement, as well as the percentage of roads with a pavement of high and high class. In the mid-70s, the technical re-equipment of the Qinghai-Tibet highway began in China, which was fully completed in the 80s, thus building an asphalt road with the highest altitude in the world. Along with the development of road construction, the construction of automobile bridges also developed, a whole group of bridges with Chinese characteristics was built: stone arch bridges, double bend arch bridges, reinforced concrete arch bridges, and various prestressed concrete and girder bridges. In the thirty-year period from 1949 to 1978, despite the vicissitudes of economic development, the length of the country's roads continued to grow at a generally stable pace and at the end of 1978 amounted to 890 thousand km, which means an average annual increase of 30 thousand km; road density reached 9.3 km／100 km 2 .

Construction of road infrastructure after the start of the openness reform policy

After the beginning of the opening up reform policy in China, the country's economy continued to develop at a high speed, accompanied by an unprecedented increase in the need for road transport; in the construction of road infrastructure there was a historical turning point, which was reflected in the following: the construction of roads began to be actively supported by both the central government and the local government at all its levels, as it was said then, “if we want to get rich, we must first build roads”; Gradually, the importance of building roads became a recognized fact throughout society. On the basis of unified planning, the planned construction of road infrastructure throughout the country began. In the early and late 1980s, a plan for the national highway network and the national expressway system was adopted and started to be implemented, which established a clear overall goal and goals for each stage in the construction of roads; along with the continued expansion of road construction, improving the level of quality has become a top priority. The rapid development of highways and other high-end highways has revolutionized the once backward road construction industry; The financing channels for road construction have diversified, gradually solving the problem of shortage of funds in road construction, especially with the decision of the State Council in 1984 to increase the amount of road maintenance fees, start collecting additional fees when buying a car, and allow the introduction of tolls on high-class highways. to repay a loan; since 1985, relevant legislation has followed, providing a stable source of funding for road construction. According to statistics, by 1999 the total length of the country's highways amounted to 1 million 350 thousand km, the road density reached 14.1 km／100 km 2, which is 1.5 times more than in 1978. The percentage of second-class roads among all roads in the country increased from 1.3% in 1979 to 12.5% ​​in 1999. The improvement in the condition of the roads connecting the main cities became especially clear, the issue of traffic intensity was resolved. At the same time, the length of county and rural roads has grown rapidly, as well as their quality has improved, in some provinces, 100% asphalt pavement has been carried out on roads, with technology up to the level of the second class; in the country, roads were laid between 100% of counties, 98% of villages and 89% of administrative villages. In general, it can be said that a network of highways covering the whole country has developed, consisting of rationally located interconnected main and auxiliary roads.

The construction of freeways deserves special attention. The expressways represent a notable achievement in China's road construction since the start of the opening up reforms. In 1988, China's first expressway Shanghai - Jiading (length 18.5 km) was put into operation. After that, the Shenyang-Dalian Expressway with a total length of 375 km and the Beijing-Tianjin-Tanggu Expressway with a total length of 143 km were built one after another. Since the beginning of the 1990s, as part of the general plan for the construction of national expressways, the construction of expressways in China began to gain momentum, the length of the annual construction of expressways increased from several tens of kilometers to more than a thousand kilometers. By the end of 1999, the total length of China's expressways in operation had already reached 11,605 km. In just 10 years, China has achieved results in the construction of high-speed highways that took developed countries a total of 40 years. The construction of expressways and other high-end highways has upgraded the technical grade of China's road construction, made it possible to get out of the backward state of the road construction industry, and at the same time greatly narrowed the gap between China and developed countries.

The rapid development of high-class highways has put forward rather high requirements for the construction of highway bridges and tunnels, and has contributed to an increase in the number and technical level of highway bridges and tunnels. In China, a number of bridges were built across the main rivers and some straits. high degree difficulties with deep-water foundations and long spans, such as the Huangshi Bridge on the Yangtze River (the first extra-large bridge across the Yangtze River independently designed and built by the Ministry of Transportation of China), the Wanxian Bridge on the Yangtze River, the Tongling Bridge on the Yangtze River, the Jiangyin Bridge on the Yangtze River (China's first and the world's fourth longest steel suspension bridge), the Second Nanjing Bridge over the Yangtze, the Fenglindu Bridge over the Yellow River, the Second Jinan Bridge over the Yellow River, the large Humen Bridge in Guangdong, sea ​​bridge Nuygushan in Shandong, Haicang Bridge in Xiamen and others. These projects have become evidence that China has already become one of the leading countries in the world in the construction of bridges with deep-water foundations and long spans. By the end of 1999, the number of automobile bridges in the country already numbered 230 thousand pieces, the total length was 8006 km; the number of tunnels totaled 1257 pieces, with a total length of 407 km. The development of the construction of automobile tunnels in our country began almost from scratch. In 1986, China's first major modern advanced road tunnel was built on the Fuzhou-Mawei First Class Highway: the Gushan Two-Lane Tunnel. Following this, a number of large modern road tunnels were built, such as Zhongliangshan, Jiyunshan, Lupanshan, Badaling, etc.

The area of ​​rural road coverage has increased markedly, after the formation of New China, the country continuously strengthened the construction of the highway network, the construction of road infrastructure developed rapidly, along with the construction of national highways and provincial highways, the pace of construction of expressways and rural highways accelerated, transportation functions road networks as a whole have been constantly improved, constantly growing overall efficiency. By the end of 2008, the total length of highways in China reached 3,730,000 km, including 60,300 km of expressways, 54,200 km of first-class highways, 285,200 km of second-class highways, and 2-class roads and above. occupy 10.72% of the total length of all roads. The technical class of the pavement and the depth of coverage have increased significantly, at the end of 2008 the length of roads with high and medium-high class of pavement reached 1,995.6 thousand km. Road density has increased from 0.84 km／100 km2 in 1949 to 38.86 km／100 km2，which means an increase of 46.26 times compared to 1949. The commissioning of the Shanghai-Jiading Expressway in 1988 marked a zero-level breakthrough in mainland China's expressway construction. After that, the construction of freeways began to advance at a relentless pace, creating new record levels: in 1999, the length of freeways exceeded 10,000 km, in 2002 it exceeded 20,000 km, in 2004 it exceeded 30,000 km, in 2005 it exceeded 40,000 km, in 2007 it exceeded 50,000 km, in 2008 it exceeded 60,000 km, steadily reaching the second place in the world; The speed of development of freeways in China has attracted the attention of the whole world. By the end of 2008, the total length of rural roads in the country amounted to 3,125 thousand km, which is 4 times more than in 1978; the percentage of settlements, villages and administrative villages with paved roads increased from 90.5% and 65.8% to 99.24% and 92.86%, respectively.

Road transport from China