China investing in fast trains

With $100 billion of China's stimulus funding funneled into building tracks and trains, "the sheer volume of equipment that they will require and the technology that will have to be developed will simply catapult them into a leadership position," Amtrak executive Stephen Gardner said, The New York Times reported Friday.

China will have 42 separate high speed train routes by 2012 with 5,000 miles of track that can accommodate 155 mph trains and 3,000 miles that can handle trains running 215 mph, the deputy chief engineer of China's railway ministry Zhang Shuguang said.

Currently, the fastest bullet train in China runs from Guangzhou to Wuhan, traveling 664 miles at and average speed of 215 mph.

By comparison, in the United States, the first high speed train is scheduled to open in 2014, an 84-mile jaunt from Tampa to Orlando, Fla., in a train that will run about 170 mph.

In Florida in January, President Barack Obama said, "Other countries aren't waiting (to invest in high-speed trains). They want those jobs. China … Germany ... they are going after them hard, making the investments required."

Copyright 2010 United Press International, Inc. (UPI).