Xin-Tibet Railway Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of China National Railway Group Co., Ltd., was officially established on August 10 with a registered capital of 95 billion yuan, marking the substantive stage of the construction of the Singapore-Tibet Railway, our country's fourth strategic channel into Tibet. This 1,980-kilometer-long railway will pass through world-class mountains such as Kunlun Mountain and Karakoram Mountain, with an average altitude of more than 4,500 meters, making it one of the most challenging projects in the history of our country's railway construction.

The Xinjiang-Tibet Railway runs from Tibet-Guizhou Station in Hotan District, Xinjiang in the north to Lhasa Station in Tibet in the south, with a design speed of 160-200 km/h. The line will pass through more than a dozen ice slopes and dozens of glaciers, spanning thousands of kilometers of desert Gobi and permafrost, with a bridge-tunnel ratio of 61.53%. In the face of the extreme environment of "high altitude, high severe cold, and high hypoxia", the project will use innovative technologies such as hot rods and insulation materials to stabilize the foundation of the permafrost layer, and be equipped with an oxygen generation system to ensure construction safety.

The project planning began in 2004 and took 20 years of demonstration and preparation. The Xinjiang section is scheduled to start construction in November 2025, and the Tibet section is expected to start in 2026. After completion, the Xinjiang-Tibet Railway will increase the freight capacity between Xinjiang and Tibet to 10 million tons, shorten the passenger transport time from 7 days to about 10 hours, and completely change the traffic bottleneck of the two provinces and regions.

As the fourth channel into Tibet after the Qinghai-Tibet, Sichuan-Tibet and Yunnan-Tibet railways, the Singapore-Tibet Railway will form our country's "four into Tibet" railway network together with the existing lines, promoting the interconnection of the Belt and Road Initiative and the South Asian subcontinent. This railway is not only a transportation project, but also an important strategic measure to promote border stability, national unity and regional development, and will bring new development opportunities to the snowy plateau.(This article is from the official website of Jiandao www.seetao.com it must not be reproduced without permission, otherwise it will be investigated, please indicate the reprint of Jiandao.com + original link) See the editor of the infrastructure engineering column of Jiandao.com/Gao Xue