ISLAMABAD – National Railway Administration of China (NRAC) and theMinistry of Railways Pakistan have undertaken initial work for working onPakistan Railways’ Mainline 1 (ML-1) that is an early harvest project ofCPEC.
According to the NRAC’s sources here, the project cost of $8.176 billionfor rehabilitation and up-gradation of the Karachi-Lahore Peshawar (ML-1)Railway Track, with a length of 1,872kms. The first phase of $3.2 billioncovers up-gradation of four segments.
The upgrade will bring the long-needed attention to railway transportation,which has deteriorated significantly over the past few decades.The Pakistan Railways carried over 70% of the national freight load in the1970s, which now stands at a meagre 4%.Reportedly, the Pakistan Railways expects that this would grow to 20% aftercompletion of this project with freight traffic increasing from five to 25million tonnes per annum by 2025. The passenger traffic is also expected toincrease by 45% (from 55 to 80 million passengers per annum).
Meanwhile, a report released by the National Bureau of Statistics said thatChina’s “four vertical and four horizontal high-speed railway network” hasalmost been completed, making China the world’s first country with acomplete high-speed rail network in operation.The report said that China’s total railway line mileage reached 127,000kilometers by the end of 2017, up 145.6 percent from 1978, with an averageannual growth of 2.3 percent.
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The distance of China’s high-speed rail hit 25,200 kilometers, topping theglobal chart.The figure for electrified railways and double-track rail in China iscurrently 86,600 and 71,800 kilometers, accounting for 68.2 percent and56.5 percent of the country’s total railway mileage, ranking first andsecond in the world respectively, according to the report.
