Recently, China's Ministry of Environmental Protection halted the conversion of the Qingdao-Jinan Railway to high-speed rail and the construction of the Tianjin-Qinhuangdao High-speed Railway in succession due to the environmental protection problems.
On April 25 and May 18, respectively, the ministry officially instructed companies carrying out the work on the Qingdao-Jinan and the Tianjin-Qinhuangdao high-speed railways to stop their work.
According to the ministry, construction on the Qingdao-Jinan High-speed Railway started before its environmental protection assessment was cleared, which violated the Environmental Protection Law and the Regulations on the Administration of Construction Project Environmental Protection.
The Tianjin-Qinhuangdao High-speed Railway violated a regulation in the Law of the People's Republic of China on Evaluation of Environmental Effects since the company did not report parts of its construction sites had changed.
Construction on the conventional Qingdao-Jinan Railway began in early 2007 and finished on Dec. 21 of 2008, and the whole length of it is 362.5 kilometers. With the upgrade to high-speed rail, the speed of trains running on the line could reach 200 to 250 kilometers, and therefore the time from Jinan to Qingdao will be cut from four hours to two and a half hours.
Tianjin-Qinhuangdao High-speed Railway started construction in November 2008 with a whole length of 261 kilometers. Its construction work period is four years, and its designed top speed is 350 kilometers per hour.
Base on the definition of "high-speed railway" established by the International Union of Railways, both the newly-built railways, with speeds over 250, kilometers per hour, and refurbished railways, with speeds over 200 kilometer per hour, can be called high-speed railways.
