China's overland Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road Thread

[Hendrik_2000]

Just one lane each way? If so, it's low capacity for a trade corridor.

It is not I5 from SFO to LA No one lives in this corridor. It is located in one of the most inhospitable place on earth with cold winter and before it was closed half of the year. It mean to be all weather year round corridor between Xinjiang and Pakistan with maintenance station along the corridor. It meant for freight traffic .So the picture is deceiving and doesn't tell the whole story. It is way much improvement than before So before you mutter your usual condescending comment think first.
There were talk of building pipeline along the corridor and connect with Iran and Pakistan future pipeline It is another strategic access to Gwadar port

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On June 30, 2006, a

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was signed between the Pakistani Highway Administration and China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) to rebuild and upgrade the Karakoram Highway. According to SASAC, the width will be expanded from 10 to 30 metres (33 to 98 ft), and its transport capacity will be increased three times its current capacity. In addition, the upgraded road will be designed to particularly accommodate heavy-laden vehicles and extreme weather conditions.
China and Pakistan are planning to link the Karakoram Highway to the southern port of

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in

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through the Chinese-aided

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-

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railway, which extends to

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.

 

[delft]

There are also plans for a railway which would give an even greater increase in transport capacity.

 

[Jeff Head]

Just one lane each way? If so, it's low capacity for a trade corridor.

Actually, given the terrain and the remote location of most of the route...it is pretty amazing.

They will have a heck of a time maintaining what they have built during the winter in many areas.

Remember also, if I am not mistaken, that there is also a rail route being built.

Having such a route will increase the opportunity and capacity for trade far above what exists now, so it is a start, and a good one at that.

Very smart move by the Chinese.

And...should the trade expand to the point of congesting this route, the Chinese have now shown that they can do this and they will build another two lanes next to these.

 

[asif iqbal]

After China completed the Tibet railway which was really a feat of modern engineering I don't think anything is impossible for Chinese construction engineers

This road is safer in the last road many land slides killed many people now China has secured all the hills above the highway and now it's safe 12 months of the year

There is also a very large dry port under construction at the border

I will one day drive through to China when I visit again on this route it's amazing !!

 

[asif iqbal]

Here is nice heart touch story

When China was not so advanced it's built the old version of the KKH and many Chinese died building the friendship road

Pakistan did not forget them

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By Zhao Yanrong in Islamabad
Thirty-two-year-old Manzoor Hussian has never been to China, but the country and its people have featured prominently in the lives of ordinary Pakistanis. It plays a part in his earliest memories.

Manzoor’s father, Madad Hussian, worked as a volunteer keeper at a Chinese cemetery for 33 years, until his death in 2010.

“My father never met the Chinese people who are resting in the cemetery, but he shared a lot of stories about how they helped us to build roads in Pakistan. I think he respected all of those buried ones his whole life,” said Manzoor, who was born and grew up nearby.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, tens of thousands of Chinese workers and engineers were sent to Pakistan to help build the Karakoram Highway connecting Pakistan to China. Hundreds died during the construction, and 88 of those are buried in the cemetery near Manzoor’s home.

His father helped build the cemetery in early 1970; afterward, he applied to be its keeper.

“I was told that those Chinese workers were very disciplined. They lived in tents, planted vegetables around their tents and cooked by themselves. They built roads for us, but never took advantage,” Manzoor said.

Because of those stories, Manzoor decided to take over his father’s responsibilities. He often takes the late shift, from 3 pm to 8 am the next morning. He has met some of the workers’ families.

“When the family comes to visit the graves, they often ask me, ‘Do you know how he or she died?’ Of course, I wouldn’t know those details since I was born after the cemetery was established. But I can feel the pain and sense of loss those Chinese families have over their loved ones. All I can do is to keep up the cemetery as well as possible to make sure they will want to visit again,” he said.

Besides family members, many Chinese workers in Pakistan, and officials from both countries, often visit the cemetery, especially for Tomb Sweeping Day.

Local students also visit the cemetery to learn the history of friendship between China and Pakistan, Manzoor said.

When Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke in February at the inauguration of the Year of China-Pakistan Friendly Exchanges, the Hussian family’s story came up.

“This touching story has become legendary,” Wang said.

 

[Dolcevita]

If and when the build this railway, I would like to savor a travel on this route and perhaps beyond. Something to look forward to hopefully in the not too distant future.

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New rail route proposed from Urumqi to Iran
By Zheng Yanpeng (China Daily) Updated: 2015-11-21 07:53
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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

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.

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.

 

[delft]

If and when the build this railway, I would like to savor a travel on this route and perhaps beyond. Something to look forward to hopefully in the not too distant future.

And from Tehran on to Damascus and Beirut. And later to Cairo.

 

[asif iqbal]

Yes but Iran uses different gauge

From Quetta to Zahidan in Iran is the rail connection

China will soon also make large dry port between two country's

And the Western motor way from Gwader port to Northern China is under construction

The Pakistan army raised a entire division to provide security for our Chinese friends who are working on the project

 

[Dolcevita]

And from Tehran on to Damascus and Beirut. And later to Cairo.

Nice. But at this time, the lines from Tehran-Baku-Tbilisi-Kars-Ankara-Istanbul-Edirne seems to be at a more advance stage. See “Harmonization of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road with the Middle Corridor Initiative” and "Railroad Cooperation Agreement between Turkey and China”.

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[delft]

Yes but Iran uses different gauge

From Quetta to Zahidan in Iran is the rail connection

China will soon also make large dry port between two country's

And the Western motor way from Gwader port to Northern China is under construction

The Pakistan army raised a entire division to provide security for our Chinese friends who are working on the project

Pakistan main railways used Indian gauge, 5'6" or 1676 mm, while China and Iran use standard gauge, 4'8.5" or 1435 mm. This proposal concerns a line through Central Asia and it crosses the main direction of the local broad gauge lines of originally 5' or 1524 mm, now changed to 1520 mm but with the same maximum and minimum gauges. ( I suppose that eventually the maximum gauge will be reduced while the minimum gauge will remain the same but it didn't when I read about it some twenty years ago. )