China’s Prize High-Speed Rail Line Plagued by Glitches

[Bonobo]

China’s Railways Ministry last week was boasting of the superiority of its high-speed rail system, saying its technology is superior to that of Japan’s vaunted Shinkansen.
So there must be a few red faces over the spate of glitches that have befallen the system’s most trumpeted line.

On Wednesday, service on the Beijing-Shanghai line was temporarily halted after one of the trains broke down, causing hundreds of passengers to have to transfer to another train to complete their journey. It was the third delay in four days on the line, which officially launched on June 30 with Premier Wen Jiabao among its inaugural riders. Power failures caused 29 trains to be stopped on Tuesday, after a similar mishap halted 11 trains Sunday.

Wednesday’s breakdown happened at a stop in Changzhou in the eastern province of Jiangsu, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing a spokesman for the Shanghai Railway Bureau. The spokesman didn’t specify the cause, it said. Tuesday’s incident occurred in a section between Bengbu and Suzhou. The Chinese Ministry of Railways posted a statement the same day apologizing for the accident.

“It leaves a question mark on China’s operational know-how,” said an executive with one of the four foreign companies that sold China high-speed technology several years ago. He said it is tough to make any definitive judgment because of the dearth of information. “In Europe and Japan, operators are more upfront and honest in disclosing information relating to accidents and malfunctions.”