China launches cost-effective cargo express trains

Three freight trains with a speed of 120 kilometers per hour respectively departed from three Chinese cities on Monday, marking the country's official launch of cargo express trains.

One of the expresses departed from Langfang City in north China's Hebei Province with 43 containers, and is going to arrive in Changping Station in south China's Guangdong Province in over 30 hours.

"The route between (Hebei Province's) Guangyang District to (Guangdong Province's) Changping Town stretches 1,750 kilometers. The maximum speed of the train can reach 120 kilometers per hour. We set the price close to that of the road transportation, which is roughly the same," said Zhang Wansheng, deputy director of China Railway Beijing Group's freight transport department.

The cargo express trains mainly travel between economically developed areas, such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, the Yangtze River Delta and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

There will be six lines, with all of them using container marshaling.

Clients are able to check the price and available spots of the containers online, and make bookings based on their needs.

"After we book the spot for containers, a fleet of trucks is dispatched to load goods directly at our location. Let's calculate the costs, it saves us about 15 percent in transportation cost," said Hou Bin, a person in charge of a logistics enterprise in Shanghai.

The SCO (Lianyungang) International Logistics Park in east China's Jiangsu Province handled over 6.69 million tonnes of cargo in January, up 3.66 percent year on year, according to the Nanjing Customs.

The transported goods mainly included six categories such as auto parts, photovoltaic modules, and general consumer goods, with business covering major countries in Central Asia and Southeast Asia.