🚄 All aboard the growth train! The China-Europe Railway Express is steaming ahead in 2024, showing a significant uptick in operations. In the first half of this year, a whopping 7,746 train trips passed through Xinjiang's Horgos Port and the Alataw Pass, marking an impressive 8.2% rise year-on-year! 🎉
These two ports in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region are doing some heavy lifting—they handle a massive 40% of all China-Europe freight train trips! 🏭🌐 As trade between Asia and Europe keeps climbing, the variety of goods cruising along these tracks has exploded. We're talking not just daily necessities and ores anymore, but also large-scale equipment, automobiles 🚗, lithium batteries 🔋, and so much more.
But it's not just about moving more stuff; it's about moving it smarter! 🤓 The Horgos Port and the Alataw Pass connect China with Kazakhstan along the Western corridor. Fun fact: China's railway tracks are 85 millimeters wider than Kazakhstan's. 🚉🔧 That means containers need a swap at the border. To speed things up, railway workers from both countries have teamed up, rolling out some nifty efficiency hacks.
\"Originally, it took us around 60 seconds to change one container. Now, it only takes about 40 seconds! ⏱️ If each train carries two containers, we can save about 40 minutes per train,\" shared Xie Shuyong, a gantry crane operator at Alataw Pass. \"Including other operations, it used to take about 2 hours and 10 minutes to complete the whole train change. Now it only takes an hour and a half!\"
Xinjiang is all about that digital upgrade life! 💻 They've kicked off the construction of the \"Digital Urumqi Railway,\" boosting container exchange capabilities. Plus, they've gone paperless 📄🚫 in customs and railway department communications, making the whole process slicker than ever.
Yang Rui, deputy director of the safety production command center at Alataw Pass, explained, \"The station pre-reserves tracks in advance to ensure uninterrupted train arrivals and departures. 🚦 The outbound train turnover speed continues to accelerate, reducing clearance times to within 5 hours. Inbound cargo information transfer processes have sped up by 4 hours!\"
Since its grand launch in 2011, the China-Europe Railway Express has been on a mission 🚀, reaching 223 cities in 25 European countries and connecting more than 100 cities in 11 Asian countries. Talk about bridging continents! 🌏🤝
So next time you think about international trade, remember there's a railway express that's making it happen faster and smarter every day! 🙌
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
