(Image Source: The Infrastructurist)

BY JESSICA FLY

ANCHOR JENNIFER MECKLES

You're watching multisource tech news analysis from Newsy.

With much ado -- China is launching a bullet train that will journey 8,125 miles between Shanghai and Beijing in record time. And it’s estimated to carry 18 million passengers a year.

Al Jazeera has more.

“This is the latest addition to China’s high speed rail network, opening to the public on Thursday, it will link the country’s two most important cities, Beijing, the political capitol, to the North, and Shanghai, the commercial hub, to the South. Now joined in record time.  In under five hours, the journey competes favorably with the same route by air and is more than twice as fast as the existing route by rail.”

Tickets for the first ride sold out in a matter of minutes. Euronews reports on some consumer worries involved with the launch.

“But there have been complaints about the prestigious project’s high cost and accusations that it is a vanity project. It’s the latest portion of a network that the government plans will stretch 45,000 kilometers by the end of 2015. But analysts say the heavily indebted Railways Ministry may have to cut back on those plans.”

The ministry is doing its best to pay those debts. Ticket prices have doubled -- causing consumer disappointment.

The Wall Street Journal reports - it could get even worse.

“China has poured, is said to have poured $300 billion into this high speed rail network across the country and there’s worries that the investment isn’t going to pay off that the loans used to pay for the project aren’t going to perform and also that some of the engineering for the project wasn’t done right. The head of one of the top railway officials was sacked recently - accused of embezzlement.”

The train was supposed to run at 380 kilometers an hour -- about 237 miles an hour -- hence its name -- CRH380.  But The Financial Times reports -- for safety reasons it is running between 300 and 350 kilometers an hour.

“But a Japanese executive familiar with high-speed rail projects says Chinese high-speed lines show impressive smoothness of ride – a sign of engineering quality... Still, the most important signal that safety is being taken seriously is the willingness of ... the new Chinese rail minister, to cut operating speeds.”

Built in 39 months -- worries abound about the safety of the train.  If a glass of water means anything -- it can sit on a table top and barely move while the train flies from Beijing to Shanghai.

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