An accumulation of over 80,000 passenger train trips has been made on the China-Laos Railway as of Saturday, handling more than 59 million passenger trips, according to the latest official data released by the China Railway Kunming Bureau.
Since the beginning of this year, the China-Laos Railway has seen a total of 14.5 million passenger trips, a 1.2-fold increase compared to the same period in 2022 when it was opened.
On April 13, 2023, with the strong support of the relevant departments of the Chinese and Lao governments, the international train route from Kunming South in southwest China's Yunnan Province to Vientiane, Laos began operating in both directions. Over the past two years, the number of cross-border train trips has increased to four, making it a popular choice for cross-border travel for both Chinese and Lao people.
"We see passengers from different countries every day. So far, the railway has seen 580,000 cross-border passenger trips, with passengers coming from 115 countries and regions around the world. The number of border crossings by passengers has increased from 300 per day to a maximum of 1,300," said Shen Fahui, a train conductor who works on the China-Laos Railway international passenger train route.
China-Laos Railway, a landmark project connecting Kunming in Yunnan with the Lao capital city of Vientiane, began operation on December 3, 2021. This railway is a flagship project linking China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Laos's strategy of "transforming itself from a landlocked to a land-linked country." In Laos, the railway stretches 414 kilometers from Boten, a border port between southwestern China and northern Laos, to Vientiane in the south. The entire railway is over 1,000 kilometers long, with the section in China being over 508 kilometers. The railway is built according to Chinese management standards and technical standards, with a design speed of 160 kilometers per hour. It is an electrified passenger and cargo rail.
The China-Laos railway project is actually a section of the Kunming-Singapore Railway Project, which connects Kunming with Singapore, passing through Laos, Thailand, and Malaysia.
In the nearly four years since the China-Laos Railway opened to traffic, the number of monthly passenger trips has surged from 600,000 to over 1.6 million today. The number of passenger train trips made on the Chinese section increased from an initial eight per day to a current peak of 86, handling an accumulation of 48.6 million passenger trips. The number of passenger train trips made on the Laotian section has also increased from an initial four per day to a current peak of 18.
China-Laos Railway handles over 59 mln passenger trips since opening
China-Laos Railway handles over 59 mln passenger trips since opening
