The Menyuan earthquake in Qinghai caused serious damage to the high-speed rail. How long will it take to restore traffic?

Judging from the problems existing in the current high-speed rail, it will resume operation after almost half a year.

According to the current news reports, after the earthquake, China Railway Lanzhou Bureau Group Company immediately launched an emergency plan to ensure the safety of train operation, blocked the Gao Tai-Yongdeng section of Lanxin Line, the Haomen-Qingshui North section of Lan Xin Passenger Dedicated Line, and the Wuwei-Tanjiajing section of Ganwu Line, stopped the line trains in time, and arranged train services, power supply, public works and other units along the line to use rail car video surveillance, foot inspection and other means to immediately carry out online inspection of line equipment, with the focus on bridges and culverts tunnels.

Judging from the length of the lines involved and the majors involved, it is not necessary to consider the normal operation of the high-speed rail in a short time. In other words, the high-speed rail may resume operation at a faster speed, but it is unknown how long it will take to resume full function and full speed operation.

In fact, it is not difficult to restore communication signals and power grids, but the damage of civil facilities such as bridges and tunnels is not so easy to restore, and the cost of restoration is more expensive than that of new construction! This may also be more difficult than building new lines.

For high-speed rail, the standard of civil engineering is much higher than that of ordinary railway, so it is very difficult to restore the original state, and there is even the possibility that it cannot be restored.

We outsiders probably don't know the geological conditions in the earthquake-stricken areas, let alone the extent to which the lines have been damaged. But from the common sense, it is quite difficult for a high-speed rail with an error of less than cm to recover to the level with an error less than cm after being damaged by the earthquake. So slowing down the operation is a high probability event.

So if I were to guess, I would guess that it might resume operation soon, but for a long time, the high-speed rail will probably need to run at a reduced speed in the earthquake-affected areas, so the overall running time will be longer and the line utilization efficiency will also decline. Maybe this is the result.