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16 Jul, 2015

Netizen Redesigns China’s High-Speed Rail Network Like a Subway Map

By Luxiao Zou

Beijing, July 15, 2015, (People’s Daily Online) – Recently, a netizen in China drew a nationwide high-speed railway network in the format of a subway map. This straightforward and clear map saves travelers tons of work in planning for transportation.

“I got the itch to travel the moment I saw this map,” a netizen comments after seeing the map.

The travelers in China find transportation more and more convenient with the expansion of high-speed rail network.

China currently owns the longest high-speed railroads in the world, 19,369.8 kilometers (6,852 miles), by the end of 2014, longer than all the other countries combined. The network is still rapidly expanding, turning the whole of China into the size of a city where transportation is as easily accessible as subway trains.

Take Beijing, capital of China, as an example, the high-speed rails to Shanghai, largest city in China, shorten traveling time to 5 hours over a distance of 1318 kilometers (818 miles). It runs on a busy schedule that a train sets out almost every other 20 minutes.

With a cheap price of 553 yuan ($89), it is not hard to imagine that someone gets off work in Beijing in the afternoon, buys a ticket at a vending machine, and rides his or her way to Shanghai for dinner.