中國提議:修建烏魯木齊 伊朗高鐵!

China's railway authority has proposed a Silk Road high-speed railway connecting the country's northwest region to West Asia via Central Asia, a plan it said would overcome the cross-border connectivity problem of different rail standards.

中國鐵道部門提議建設經由中亞、連接中國西北部和西亞的絲綢之路高速鐵路，該計劃將克服不同鐵路標準的跨境連接問題。

He Huawu, chief engineer of China Railway Corp, put forward the proposal at a Thursday forum on the One Belt, One Road Initiative hosted by China Civil Engineering Society.

本週四由中國土木工程學會主辦的一帶一路論壇上，中國鐵路總公司總工程師何華武提出該提議。

His proposed route was from China's Urumqi and Yining to Almaty in Kazakhstan, then to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, Tashkent and Samarkand in Uzbekistan, Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and finally blending into West Asia's network through Teheran, Iran.

該路線從中國烏魯木齊、伊寧出發，途經哈薩克斯坦的阿拉木圖、吉爾吉斯斯坦的比什凱克、塔什干、烏茲別克斯坦的撒馬爾罕、土庫曼斯坦的阿什哈巴德，最後通過伊朗的德黑蘭到達西亞鐵路網。

The northeast-southwest line would be complementary to the existing railway network in central Asian nations, which mostly run southeast to northwest toward Moscow, He said. What's more important, it could get rid of the incompatibility between this region's wide-gauge track systems and China's standard-gauge system.

何表示，東北、西南路線將是對中亞國家現有的鐵路網絡的一個補充，其中大部分是從東南部運行至西北部直至莫斯科，至關重要的一點是，它將使得這些地區寬軌距的鐵路系統與中國的標準軌距系統相兼容。

For years, the 1.52-meter track standard adopted in Central Asia has been a headache for logistics managers because it is not based on the 1.435 meter standard track adopted in China and most other parts of the world. Changing gauges at the border takes days for cargo and significantly cuts railway transport's competitiveness against shipping by sea.

多年來，中亞地區採用的1.52米軌距標準對物流經理來說是個大麻煩，因爲這和中國的1.435軌距標準及世界其他地區的軌距標準不同，在邊境地區變換軌距要花幾天時間，對於貨物運輸來說，與海上運輸相比，鐵路這一運輸方式的競爭力就稍顯弱勢了。

It is unlikely now to persuade those countries to change their existing railways, He said, but the high-speed rail he envisions along the new route would connect seamlessly to China's network and other regions. That's because the worldwide standard for fast rail is the 1.435 meter variety, so a new line could be built based on it.

說服這些國家改變他們現有的鐵路系統是不可能的，但是他所設想的一帶一路沿線的高鐵將實現中國和這些地區的無縫連接，這是因爲快軌的國際標準軌距是1.435米，新鐵路將以這一標準進行建設。

"The Khorgos station bordering Kazakhstan last year handled less than 17 million metric tons of cargo running at full capacity, but beyond the station, the east-west annual cargo transportation capacity is 100 million tons," He said. The bottleneck undermined the idea of a large-capacity corridor.

“在與哈薩克斯坦接壤的霍爾果斯站，去年處理的滿負荷運行貨物不到1700萬公噸，但卻超出了車站負荷，而東西走向的年貨物運輸量達1億噸”，何表示。這一瓶頸阻礙了建設大容量運輸走廊的想法。

"Increased container traffic and sea container traffic moved by land instead could justify the cost of building the line," he said.

“轉移至陸上運輸的集裝箱運輸和海上集裝箱運輸，正好可以平衡該線路的建設成本”，何表示。

According to He, container trains and passenger trains could run on the same route. The only difference would be speed. A passenger train could run at 250 to 300 kilometers per hour, while a container train could run at 120 km/h.

集裝箱列車和客運列車可以在同一條路線運行。唯一的區別只是速度，客運列車以250至300公里的時速運行，而集裝箱列車的運行時速是120公里/小時。

Other experts cautioned that an Asian railway link has been under discussion for a long time and has not materialized mainly because of various geopolitical concerns of the countries alone the route.

一些專家警示，亞洲鐵路網絡的建設已經討論了很長一段時間，但並未實現，主要原因是各國在路線上單獨的地理位置。