Lanzhou–Xinjiang high-speed railway

Construction work began on November 4, 2009. The 1,776-kilometre (1,104 mi) railway took four years to complete, of which, 795 kilometres (494 mi) is in Gansu, 268 kilometres (167 mi) in Qinghai and 713 kilometres (443 mi) in Xinjiang. Track laying for the line was completed on November 16, 2013.[5] Thirty-one stations will be built along the line. The project costs 143.5 billion yuan.[6]

Unlike the existing Lanxin railway, which runs entirely in Gansu and Xinjiang, the new high-speed rail is routed from Lanzhou to Xining in Qinghai Province before heading northwest across the Qilian Mountains into the Hexi Corridor at Zhangye. The rail tracks in the section near Qilianshan No. 2 Tunnel are at 3,607 metres (11,834 ft) above sea level,[7] making it the highest high-speed rail track in the world.

Lanzhou–Xinjiang high-speed railway is shown on the map as light-blue color line.

The first high-speed train traveled over this line on June 3, 2014. This was a test train with a media contingent with full revenue service not due to start until the end of 2014.[8][9] The first segment of the line, the Ürümqi–Qumul part, was inaugurated on November 16, 2014.[10] This high-speed railway segment is the first ever railway of that kind to exist in the Xinjiang autonomous region. The rest of the line opened on December 26, 2014. The line cuts train travel time between the two cities from 20 hours to 12 hours. It also freed up capacity on the older Lanzhou–Xinjiang railway for freight transport.[11][12]

On November 30, 2017, the Daheyan connection line between the Lanzhou–Xinjiang high-speed railway and the conventional Southern Xinjiang railway opened near Daheyan Town (near Turpan railway station).[13] This will allow passenger trains traveling from Urumqi to destinations in Southern Xinjiang (such as Korla) to use the Ürümqi–Turpan section of the high-speed line before switching to the Southern Xinjiang Railway.[14]

On 5 December 2021, Shandanmachang railway station opened along the railway. At an elevation of 3,108 m (10,197 ft), it is the world's highest high-speed rail station.[15]

An analysis of China's railway network published in 2021 showed that the Lanzhou–Xinjiang high-speed railway has the lowest utilization rate among all high-speed railways in the country, carrying, on average, merely 2.3 million passenger kilometers of service per kilometer of the mainline. In comparison, the average load over China's high-speed rail network is 17 million passenger-km per km, and the nation's highest-volume line, the Beijing–Shanghai one, carries 48 million passenger-km per km. According to the same analysis, a high-speed line would need to carry ca. 36 million passenger-km per km to fully pay its own operating costs. While the Lanzhou-Xinjiang line has the capacity to carry over 160 pairs of high-speed trains per day, it currently only carries 4.[35]

As a result of the Belt and Road Initiative, freight transport along the Eurasian Land Bridge corridor increased and the conventional speed Lanzhou–Xinjiang railway sometimes hits capacity limitations, which has led some freight traffic to be shifted to the underutilized high-speed line.[36]