Laos-China Railway on Track for December Opening: Official
The Diplomat
Excerpt
Aug 16, 2021
The multibillion-dollar Laos-China railway is set to begin operations by the end of the year as scheduled, a Lao official said last week, completing the first link of a long-envisioned rail line connecting southwest China with Singapore.
The announcement was made by Minister of Planning and Investment Sonexay Siphandone on August 11 during a meeting of 10th Laos-China Railway Project Construction Committee, according to Pasaxon, the newspaper of the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party.
Sonexay said that as of July 25, construction of the railway, which runs from the town of Boten on Laos’s border with China to the capital Vientiane, was 93.82 percent complete. “The Laos-China Railway will be completed in November, and will be open and ready for use by Laos National Day on 2 December,” he said.
Sonexay also told the meeting that Chinese operators are bringing in locomotives, electric multiple unit trains, and other equipment to conduct the first trial run of the railway in October, before opening it to the public on December 2.
An effective extension of China’s high-speed rail system into Laos, the Laos-China Railway is a striking example of Chinese technical prowess, and a headline project of Xi Jinping’s world-spanning Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The standard gauge single-track line cuts through 417 kilometers of rugged terrain from Boten to Vientiane, including 61 kilometers of bridges and 75 tunnels with a total length of 198 kilometers.
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