Look - The Future! 5 & nbsp; Grandiose Transport Projects From & Nbsp; China

While others are fantasizing, the Chinese are realizing. Yes, the first drone did not appear here at all. And the first high-speed train is also not from China. But once missed opportunities to become the first are a great incentive to surpass everyone in the future.

We have collected 5 impressive projects for the transport of the future from China: from those that still exist only at the level of design, to those that are transporting thousands of people right now. And knowing the stubbornness of the Chinese, you can be sure that those who belong to the first group will sooner or later find themselves in the second.

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Sealed railway in the Himalayas

Status: works successfully For whom: for residents of highlands and remote villages in the permafrost zon

Perhaps the clearest demonstration of what China is capable of in the field of transportation. Yes, we've all seen the railways. But not like that. Meet: the trains and carriages on which you can go into space. Or go down under the water.

Seriously - before departure, hatches are closed down here, the windows do not open, and in the cabin an acceptable level of saturation of the air mixture and pressure is artificially maintained. The thing is that the Qinghai-Tibet Railway runs along the upper border of the troposphere - where there is not enough air, and in a critical case, oxygen starvation can begin. At an altitude of 4 thousand kilometers above sea level.

This is a familiar environment for the Himalayas, the highest mountain range on the planet. Tibet is located on the slopes of the Himalayan mountains: a territory with a turbulent history and a complex legal status. For decades, activists and human rights defenders from around the world have called for the liberation of Tibet from Chinese occupation. The PRC does not consider its management of the occupation, because for communist China, Tibet is just one of the regions of a huge country. And this region needs transport.

Before the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the journey from remote Tibetan villages to “greater China” took days, if not weeks. People moved on foot or on donkeys. No one has ever tried to build a railway in such difficult natural conditions. The Russian Urals, for example, are 4 times lower than the Himalayas, and in the case of Tibet, the solvability of an engineering problem is several times lower.

Yet China did it. The carriages are more like a bathyscaphe than an electric train. Mind-blowing overpasses that lift the train to the height of a five-story building for the sake of local fauna: the railway literally hovers above the ground so as not to interfere with local animals. Rails that are laid directly in the permafrost. Before the PRC, only the USSR faced such a need - and failed to cope with the task. In the polar regions of the Russian North, there are simply no really long railways with regular passenger traffic. And in China there is.

The thing is that Chinese engineers used liquid nitrogen for additional freezing of the soil. With this technology, you can not be afraid that in the summer months the earth will thaw and the rails will be transported in different directions. Deep freezing guarantees the safety of the railway in any thaw. The branch was built from 1974 to 2006. Now the high-altitude railway is working and regularly transports passengers on a daily basis.

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A city the size of Belarus and the unfolding of rivers

Status: in project For whom: for residents of the metropoli

China's most ambitious and daunting undertaking is altering riverbeds. Rivers are not only the most important part of the planet's ecosystem, but also the most important transport arteries since antiquity. Now they deliver goods along the rivers, carry timber, oil, cars and, of course, arrange cruises. And in megalopolises, rivers participate in the urban transport system: water taxis and regular ferries run along them.

China's megaproject began with overpopulation in Beijing. There are so many people living in the capital and its suburbs that it took 4-5 hours to get to work in one direction. This problem was solved in China on a grand scale: the 13-millionth Tianjin will be attached to the 22-millionth Beijing. And along with the whole province of Hebei, notorious for its dirty metallurgical production. Another 78 million people live in the region.

The resulting monster should become the metropolitan metropolitan area of the PRC. It will be a city the size of Belarus and a population of over 130 million. Almost the same number of people live in all of Russia.

And this is where rivers appear in the project. Located on the edge of a desertification zone, Beijing and the surrounding area suffer from water shortages. Large-scale construction work in the new mega-city only exacerbates this deficit. The reversal of rivers is intended to correct the imbalance.

In order to supply the city with water, three giant canals will be dug in China. They will direct water from the humid southern regions to the arid north, where Beijing and Tianjin are located. The 1150-kilometer eastern canal will drain water from the Yangtze River. The canal will flow up the slopes with 20 pumping stations and fill reservoirs in Tianjin. The second channel, 1263 km long, will flow downward - it is intended for Beijing.

The third was named the Great Western Canal. This project is still at the planning stage. It will redirect water from the Yangtze tributaries to the Yellow River, located to the north. This will require the resettlement of thousands of people who now live in villages: they will be flooded and made new channels. On the way of this canal there will be many bridges and tunnels, which are planned to be built in parallel.

The Chinese government is determined to implement river redirection despite the risks of drying up for the Yangtze itself. China intends to improve the situation for the Yangtze with the help of even more southern rivers, which now flow to neighboring countries: India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. A possible drought in these countries does not bother China.

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Record underwater tunnel

Status: in project For whom: for business and trave

Perhaps the most complex transportation project of the early 21st century. China has decided to dig an ultra-long tunnel in a seismically active zone. Under water.

The Dalian-Yantai Tunnel, also known as the Bohai Bay Tunnel, was conceived in 2013. They wanted to start construction in 2016, but the project turned out to be too difficult even for China. The start of work was postponed several times; now the end of 2020 is named as the launch date. If the deadline is not rescheduled again, then we will be able to drive through the longest underwater tunnel in the world in 2039 - its length will be 123 kilometers, of which 90 will pass under water.

The reason for the construction is purely economic. Located in the north, Dalian belongs to the rusty belt - this is the name of the territory of the PRC with many outdated factories built on the Soviet model. Located in the south of the Bohai Bay, the city of Yantai is already an economically developed south. Industrialization and urbanization came here later and developed according to the Western, capitalist scenario. It is in the south-west of the country that the main economic power of China is concentrated.

Linking backward regions with the most developed regions of the country is the main meaning of the underwater tunnel. In China, it was considered that the operation of the tunnel would bring the economy of the PRC $ 3.7 billion a year. It is also called training before a more ambitious project - a tunnel from China to South Korea through the Yellow Sea.

The current estimate of the project includes an amount of $ 43 billion. This money will be required, among other things, to strengthen the walls to protect against earthquakes. In 1976, an earthquake in this region killed more than 6 thousand people. And in the sixties, an eight-point earthquake occurred in the Bay of Bohai itself - exactly where they want to build a tunnel now. This is what makes the underwater transport project so challenging and impressive.

It will be impossible to get there by car: the tunnel will be made a railway one. On the other hand, the car can be loaded into a freight car, and it will be possible to take a passenger seat on the same train. The route from Dalian to Yantai will be shortened from the current 15 hours required to bypass the Bohai Bay by the coastal road to one hour by rail.

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The longest bridge in the world

Status: works successfully For whom: for residents and tourist

Previously, the road on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau route took 4 hours. Three huge cities are located on opposite sides of the Pearl River, and together they are part of the Big Bay region - the territory in which China's economic rise began. In order not to slow down the pace of GDP growth, the authorities strengthened integration through the bridge.

Since 2018, this distance has been covered in 40 minutes. The world's longest bridge - with a total length of 55 kilometers - consists of several sections with right- and left-hand traffic. The fact is that in Hong Kong and mainland China, they drive on different sides of the road, so that drivers move from one side to the other right on the bridge.

But the main thing: in some places the structure dives under water. The whole structure is a hybrid of a bridge and a tunnel: in the direction of travel, drivers drive through artificial islands, soar into the air on the surface sections and plunge down on underwater sections.

Buses run across this bridge every 5 minutes. Access for personal vehicles is limited: due to the extreme motorization of Hong Kong, Macau and the border areas, the number of passes that give the right to cross the bridge does not exceed 10,000 per day. And everyone must have the rights of three countries at once: China, Hong Kong and Macau.

Despite these restrictions, the bridge is in high demand. And the most dissatisfied were the adherents of feng shui. They argue that the two artificial islands that make up the bridge are like snake heads that look towards Hong Kong and thus send curses on the city.

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Unmanned magnetoplane

Status: works successfully For whom: for residents and tourist

A train that travels faster than an airplane. This is not a fantasy, this is a magnetoplane at the Shanghai airport: each passenger of such a train can personally assess how he overtakes a plane taking off in parallel.

Magnetoplanes (they are also maglev) work on the technology of magnetic levitation. Such trains do not roll, but literally hang in the air: thanks to the repulsion of the different poles of the magnet, the cars are a few millimeters above the rail. Friction also does not occur during movement - in fact, there is nothing to wear in such trains. And nowhere to get exhaust - this is an environmentally friendly technology that eliminates fossil fuels.

There is only one difficulty: magnetoplanes are very expensive. How expensive that such projects were abandoned in the USSR and the USA. At the end of the last century, small Maglev lines operated in West Germany and Great Britain, but then they were closed. And then China came.

China hasn't just revived the Soviet dream of a train that flies through the air. China was able to replicate the technology. It all started with the same high-speed line in Shanghai: it was built using European technologies. But then Chinese engineers intervened in the matter - they developed a simpler (and therefore cheaper) version of the Maglev. Such lines are now operating in Beijing and Changsha.

If high-speed modifications accelerate to 431 km / h, then a less expensive option in Beijing is enough 100 km / h. And by 2021, a new ultra-fast magnetoplane should appear in Qingdao: according to calculations, it will be able to develop 600 km / h. However, the main thing: the magnetoplane successfully solves the problem of environmentally friendly urban transport with a gigantic service life. And at the same time, it saves people from the profession of a driver - all Chinese magnetoplanes work autonomously. What is this if not the ultimate transport of the future?