China in love with rail speed

Departures hall of the new central station in Yibin, Sichuan, September 19, 2024. GILLES SABRIé FOR “M LE MAGAZINE DU MONDE” The shiny tiles, the rows of armchairs in the large waiting hall, the billboards and security gates, everything is still brand new at Yibin Central Station in Sichuan, western China. In this month of September, the 47,000 square meters of interior as well as the 12,000 square meters of esplanade, inaugurated in December 2023, are still a little empty. For the moment there are only a few trains, one per hour and mostly in the morning, but everything will accelerate with the increase in power, in the coming weeks, of the high-speed line linking the capital of Sichuan, Chengdu, to the megacity of Chongqing, a branch of which makes a detour via Yibin. Ultimately, the line will also reach the sprawling capital of Yunnan province, Kunming, 850 kilometers south of Chengdu. Regarding the scale of traffic, the director of Yibin station, Mou Ling, shows no concern. The city’s central station welcomes three thousand passengers a day, but soon it will be ten thousand. This man, who previously worked in line management in an office, discovers the challenges of managing a station: he coordinates bus connections, manages delivery access, prepares for the ramp-up. He turns towards the large glass facade and points to the huge construction site facing the station. Concrete towers on which cranes move around a long metal canopy. “You have to imagine,” says Mou Ling. When it’s all finished next year, the neighborhood will evoke a dragon’s body, a bamboo forest and the confluence of rivers. So many symbolic elements of this city of two million inhabitants crossed by the Yangtze River. There will be a cultural space, a planted promenade and, above all, a vast shopping center, like those in Beijing or Chengdu, punctuated by parking exits. Yibin is a city that wants to exist. A promise of development for the population This is how rail life goes in China, fast, ever faster. According to the Chinese mode of development, the Communist Party’s mission is to constantly provide its population with new infrastructure. “Users want it to be efficient, comfortable, and economic progress to be visible,” the station director believes. Yibin has thus not one, but two new stations since the end of 2023. Yibin center, therefore, and Yibin east, which are added to Yibin west, opened five years ago, an eternity in Chinese time. The high-speed line will serve the three stations. You have 82.19% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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