Sleek, silvery and ready to fly, Shanghai's 430kph magnetic-levitation train began its daily commercial operation yesterdayday, shooting out of its station amid high hopes for better -- and much more expensive -- commuting.
The opening came a year and a day after German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visited Shanghai for the maiden voyage of the German-built project.
PHOTO: AP
The first train yesterday pulled out at 8:32am from Longyang Station with 10 passengers aboard for the 7-minute, 20-second whoosh of a journey -- 30 kilometers to Pudong International Airport.
The price of an economy seat is 75 yuan (about US$9), and VIP seats cost 150 yuan (about US$18). Trains will run every 20 minutes daily.
Security guards stood by at the entrance. Passengers were required to go through airport-style security to board. Digital signs monitored the speed for passengers.
Based on German technology, the US$1.2-billion train connects Shanghai to its 3-year-old airport, the city's second.
The system underwent nearly a year of testing since it made an inaugural experimental run on Dec. 31, 2002, carrying Schroeder and former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji. More than 200,000 people have ridden the train in weekend test runs since then.
German companies spent decades and billions of dollars developing maglev technology, but had searched in vain for a customer until Shanghai leaders picked the system as a way to highlight the city's high-tech ambitions.
Some have criticized it as an expensive prestige project with limited usefulness.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
The US said it plans to help build a first-of-its-kind industrial hub in the Philippines to boost production of inputs crucial to US supply chains. The 4,000-acre hub is intended to be “a purpose-built platform for allied manufacturing” and “an investment acceleration hub where the specific industrial activities are shaped by market demand,” the US Department of State said on Thursday. The project — touted as an “economic security zone” — would be within the Luzon Economic Corridor, a flagship economic project backed by the US and Japan on the main Philippine island. The project was also described as “the first artificial intelligence
RSS