Questions ... the train collision in China has sparked accusations of corruption and raised concerns that China may be building high-speed rail too quickly. Questions ... the train collision in China has sparked accusations of corruption and raised concerns that China may be building high-speed rail too quickly. Photo: ALY SONG
SHANGHAI: The train collision on a high-speed rail line in eastern China that killed 39 people and injured 210 others has raised fresh doubts about the safety of one of the largest, most expensive public works projects undertaken.
Those concerns come as Beijing investigates corruption accusations against high-ranking railway officials and allegations that some unqualified companies may have been awarded contracts for part of the $400 billion project.
High-speed rail's excellent safety record in Europe and in Japan - not a single fatality has occurred in Japan since the technology was introduced in the 1960s - has led some experts to ask if China is moving too swiftly to build about 19,000 kilometres of track by 2020.
''There appear to have been some irregularities in the high-speed rail program,'' said Richard Di Bona, a transportation specialist at LLA Consultancy in Hong Kong. ''Maybe this was corruption or substandard work, or perhaps things were put into place too fast.''
The government's only explanation for Saturday's accident has been that a lightning strike disabled equipment, allowing a train carrying about 550 passengers to strike the rear of another train with about 1072 riders on a viaduct near the city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province. Eight cars derailed, with four hurtling off a bridge.
Immediately after the accident the government dismissed three more railway officials without explanation and announced an investigation into its cause. But a news conference was postponed.
Several rail experts have said they doubt that lightning was the sole cause of the crash.
''This is extremely rare,'' said Vukan Vuchic, a rail expert at the University of Pennsylvania. ''I've never heard of lightning doing that, but if it did, everything else would stop too. And the signal system should keep trains at a safe distance.''
In China, a torrent of public criticism continued on Tuesday, with bloggers and citizens asking why the government was not more forthcoming about the cause of the crash, why parts of the wreckage were buried at the site and why a baby was found alive in the wreck even after railway authorities had said there were no signs of life.
The government moved swiftly to compensate victims' families, agreeing to pay one family 500,000 yuan, or more than $71,100, the official Xinhua news agency said.
One Chinese media outlet reported that bonuses of 100,000 yuan were promised to families who signed compensation agreements quickly.
The accident occurred less than a month after the government opened its bullet train service between Beijing and Shanghai, and just more than five months after China dismissed its minister of railways, Liu Zhijun, for ''severe violations of discipline''.
After Liu's dismissal, Chinese newspapers and magazines published accounts that said he had illegally steered huge construction contracts to friends. Several experts speculated that some construction covered by the contracts may have been shoddy, and could eventually pose safety problems.
If China admits to safety problems with the high-speed rail line or scales it back, it would be a devastating blow to a project that is seen throughout China as a source of national pride.
The New York Times