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The purpose of this paper is to summarize the status and characteristics of rail technology of high-speed railway in China, and point out the development direction of rail technology of high-speed railway.

This study reviews the evolution of high-speed rail standards in China, comparing their chemical composition, mechanical attributes and geometric specifications with EN standards. It delves into the status of rail production technology, shifts in key performance indicators and the quality characteristics of rails. The analysis further examines the interplay between wheels and rails, the implementation of grinding technology and the techniques for inspecting rail service conditions. It encapsulates the salient features of rail operation and maintenance within the high-speed railway ecosystem. The paper concludes with an insightful prognosis of high-speed railway technology development in China.

The rail standards of high-speed railway in China are scientific and advanced, highly operational and in line with international standards. The quality and performance of rail in China have reached the world’s advanced level. The 60N profile guarantees the operation quality of wheel–rail interaction effectively. The rail grinding technology system scientifically guarantees the long-term good service performance of the rail. The rail service state detection technology is scientific and efficient. The rail technology will take “more intelligent” and “higher speed” as the development direction to meet the future needs of high-speed railway in China.

The development direction of rail technology for high-speed railway in China is defined, which will promote the continuous innovation and breakthrough of rail technology.

This study aims to analyze the development direction of train speed, density and weight in China.

The development of China's railway in the past 40 years can be divided into 3 stages. At the stage of potential tapping and capacity expansion, it is important to improve the train weight and density by upgrading the existing lines, and improving transportation capacity rapidly. At the stage of railway speed increase, the first priority is to increase train speed, reduce the travel time of passenger train, and synchronously take into account the increase of train density and weight. At the stage of developing high-speed railway, train speed, density and weight are co-developing on demand.

The train speed of high-speed railway will be 400 km h⁻¹, the interval time of train tracking will be 3 min, and the traffic density will be more than 190 pairs per day. The running speed of high-speed freight EMU will reach 200 km h⁻¹ and above. The maximum speed of passenger train on mixed passenger and freight railway can reach 200 km h⁻¹. The minimum interval time of train tracking can be compressed to 5 min. The freight train weight of 850 m series arrival-departure track railway can be increased to 4,500–5,000 t and that of 1,050 m series to 5,500–6,400 t. EMU trains should gradually replace ordinary passenger trains to improve the quality of railway passenger service. Small formation trains will operate more in intercity railway, suburban railway and short-distance passenger transportation.

The research can provide new connotations and requirements of railway train speed, density and weight in the new railway stage.

The causes of high-speed railway failures are complex, and it is difficult to quantitatively and accurately describe safety evaluation. The purpose of this paper is to construct a model to ensure the safety of high-speed railway operations.

The authors construct a high-speed railway operation safety evaluation index system from four aspects: personnel, equipment, environment and management and analyze the inter-coupling relationship of various safety factors. Based on the evaluation index system, the use of network analytic hierarchy process (ANP) and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation will be used to establish a high-speed railway operation safety evaluation model.

Through the literature investigation and field investigation, combined with high-speed railway safety key points and system composition, 4 first-level indicators and 17 second-level indicators were selected to construct a high-speed railway operation safety evaluation index system. It can be seen from the results that the personnel management system and the signal and control system have the largest weight.

On the basis of establishing an evaluation index system, comprehensively considering the internal coupling relationship between evaluation indexes and the fuzziness of high-speed railway operation safety evaluation, high-speed railway uses ANP fuzzy network analysis method to construct high-speed railway operation, and the safety evaluation model has certain advantages and practicability in the case of the relative lack of high-speed railway operation data and fault data.

This study aims to investigate how opening high-speed railways affects the cost of debt financing based on China's background.

Using panel data on Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2017, this study constructs a quasi-natural experiment and adopts a difference-in-difference model with multiple time periods to empirically examine the relation between the high-speed railway openings and debt financing cost.

Our results show that opening high-speed railways reduces the cost of debt financing, and this negative correlation is more significant in non-state firms, firms with weaker internal control, and firms that hire non-Big Four auditors. Besides, we explore the impact mechanisms and find that opening high-speed railways improves analyst attention, institutional investor participation, and information disclosure quality, which in turn lowers the cost of debt financing.

The results imply that the opening of high-speed railways helps to alleviate the information asymmetry and adverse selection between firms and creditors and ultimately reduces the cost of corporate debt financing.

This paper can inform firms and stakeholders about the impact of opening high-speed railways on debt financing cost: it improves the information environment, reduces the geographical location restrictions of debt financing, ensures the reasonable pricing of corporate debt, and thus promotes the healthy and sound development of the debt market.

This paper provides theoretical support and empirical evidence for the impact of infrastructure construction on the information environment of the debt market in China, which enriches the research on the “high-speed railway economy.” In addition, as an exogenous event, the opening of high-speed railways instantly shortens the time distance between firms and external stakeholders, which gives us a natural environment to conduct empirical research, thus providing a new perspective for financial research on firms' geographical location.

This method will become a new development trend in subgrade structure design for high speed railways.

This paper summarizes the structural types and design methods of subgrade bed for high speed railways in China, Japan, France, Germany, the United States and other countries based on the study and analysis of existing literature and combined with the research results and practices of high speed railway subgrade engineering at home and abroad.

It is found that in foreign countries, the layered reinforced structure is generally adopted for the subgrade bed of high speed railways, and the unified double-layer or multi-layer structure is adopted for the surface layer of subgrade bed, while the simple structure is adopted in China; in foreign countries, different inspection parameters are adopted to evaluate the compaction state of fillers according to their respective understanding and practice, while in China, compaction coefficient, subsoil coefficient and dynamic deformation modulus are adopted for such evaluation; in foreign countries, the subgrade top deformation control method, the subgrade bottom deformation control method, the subsurface fill strength control method are mainly adopted in subgrade bed structure design of high speed railways, while in China, dynamic deformation control of subgrade surface and dynamic strain control of subgrade bed bottom layer is adopted in the design. However, the cumulative deformation of subgrade caused by train cyclic vibration load is not considered in the existing design methods.

This paper introduces a new subgrade structure design method based on whole-process dynamics analysis that meets subgrade functional requirements and is established on the basis of the existing research at home and abroad on prediction methods for cumulative deformation of subgrade soil.

This paper aims to document and to illustrate highly usable research: a practical framework for realizing the sustainable operations of the high investment, technology-intensive high-speed railways in China. Also, for the first time, we draw a broad, metaphorical relationship between railways within a country to Chinese meridian lines within a human body. These are similar in enabling flows across the country and human body.

Employing Chinese case studies, we attempt to apply methodological procedures involving operational, financial and developmental in realizing the sustainability of high-speed railways. Critical criteria are emphasized for efficiency, financial viability and long-term funding sustained development of high-speed railways in the Chinese context. Policymakers may utilize the illustrative framework in working toward specific recommendations that may be implementable.

Three critical aspects to sustainability are operational, financial solvency and developmental. Our empirical investigations result in the working out of the procedural aspects as well. Based on this three-way classification, we design an evaluative framework for realizing sustainability of high-speed railways. Our insights are based on the social reality of China. Thus, we argue that cash handouts by government are necessary solutions, given the intensive capital investments required of high-speed railways for strongly positive externalities generated. On developmental aspects of sustainability, there should be rational, in-depth studies conducted so as to lead to rational choices of sites. Strong passenger flows coupled with affordability of fares are the twin guarantees of continuing, profitable performances.

This work on sustainability is globally, most highly significant for two reasons. First, railway is one fundamental mean of transportation within China. Thus, the sustainability of railway matters to a majority of the 1.3 billion people. Second, transport volume of China’s railway is the world’s largest. By developing such a comprehensive methodology, we hope to enhance how top management of Chinese Railways may keep the high-speed railways sustainable into the future.

This paper is socially highly significant, especially in the context of what has happened in recent years in China’s railway industry, and may contribute by providing both the regulators and management with an objective methodology in future projects assessment within high-speed railway.

This paper develops an overall framework for enabling management to realize sustainability of high-speed railway within China. The ideas, concepts and methodologies are likely beneficial to top management, regulators and policymakers within the railway transportation, a state monopoly.

The operation safety of the high-speed railway has been widely concerned. Due to the joint influence of the environment, equipment, personnel and other factors, accidents are inevitable in the operation process. However, few studies focused on identifying contributing factors affecting the severity of high-speed railway accidents because of the difficulty in obtaining field data. This study aims to investigate the impact factors affecting the severity of the general high-speed railway.

A total of 14 potential factors were examined from 475 data. The severity level is categorized into four levels by delay time and the number of subsequent trains that are affected by the accident. The partial proportional odds model was constructed to relax the constraint of the parallel line assumption.

The results show that 10 factors are found to significantly affect accident severity. Moreover, the factors including automation train protection (ATP) system fault, platform screen door and train door fault, traction converter fault and railway clearance intrusion by objects have an effect on reducing the severity level. On the contrary, the accidents caused by objects hanging on the catenary, pantograph fault, passenger misconducting or sudden illness, personnel intrusion of railway clearance, driving on heavy rain or snow and train collision against objects tend to be more severe.

The research results are very useful for mitigating the consequences of high-speed rail accidents.

High-speed maglev technology can address the issues of adhesion, friction, vibration and high-speed current collection in traditional wheel-rail systems, making it an important direction for the future development of high-speed rail technology.

This paper elaborates on the demand and significance of developing high-speed maglev technology worldwide and examines the current status and technological maturity of several major high-speed maglev systems globally.

This paper summarizes the challenges in the development of high-speed maglev railways in China. Based on this analysis, it puts forward considerations for future research on high-speed maglev railways.

This paper describes the development status and technical maturity of several major high-speed maglev systems in the world for the first time, summarizes the existing problems in the development of China's high-speed maglev railway and on this basis, puts forward the thinking of the next research of China's high-speed maglev railway.