The world’s longest high-speed rail line became operational in China on Wednesday.
The longest high-speed rail line  spans over half of China. The 2,298-kilometre (1,425-mile) rail line will connect Beijing with Guangzhou, which means that passengers will reach from the capital to southern commercial hub in just eight hours. It used to take the passengers at least 22 hours previously to cover the same distance.

According to Chinese newspaper, Global Times, two trains departed from stations in Beijing and Guangzhou at 0900 hours and 1000 hours (local time) respectively to mark the opening of 2,298-kilometer long rail line, largest in world.

The trains will run at an average speed of 300 km per hour. It will have 35 stops in major cities such as Zhengzhou, Wuhan on the Yangtze River and Changsha. It will make the travel of the travelers more easier and more hassle-free.

“At least pairs of trains will run on the new line each day. The alternative schedules have been made for weekends and peak travel times,” said Zhou Li, director general of science and technology of Chinese Ministry of Railways (MOR).

He said the opening of the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed line shows that China’s high-speed railway network has started to take shape.

China has over 9,300 km of high-speed railways in operation
With the opening of the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed line, China now has more than 9,300 km of high-speed railways in operation.

Chinese government aims to create a high-speed railway backbone featuring four east-west lines and four north-south lines with a total operating mileage of more than 120,000 km by 2020.

Chinese Railway officials said they have taken steps ahead of the new line’s opening to improve maintenance and inspection of infrastructure, including track, rolling stock and emergency response measures.

“The emergency rescue system and all kinds of emergency pre-plans are established to improve emergency response ability,” they said.

State media have reported that December 26 was chosen to start passenger service on the Beijing-Guangzhou line to commemorate the birth in 1893 of revered Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

The world's longest high-speed rail service, which starts between Beijing and Guangzhou on Wednesday, is expected to bring huge economic prosperity to towns and cities along its route, creating what officials are calling world-class "city clusters" across Central China.

Designed to carry passengers at an average speed of 300 km per hour, the high-speed link will cut travel time between the country's capital and the southern economic center to about eight hours.

There will be 35 stops along the way, including major cities such Shijiazhuang, Zhengzhou, Wuhan and Changsha, and the route will cut through areas with a combined population of 300 million to 400 million.

"Opening the route will not only bring these cities closer, but will generate business for many different supporting facilities, promoting change in their growth patterns for years to come," said Wang Mengshu, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

He said GDP growth in many of those areas had been independent of each other in the past, and relied mainly on real estate development and automobile sales, both of which had been run inefficiently while consuming massive resources.

Better access to fast railway links will now mean improved cargo transportation between factories in various cities, leading to greater expansion of support facilities, Wang said.

"Railways will indeed become a way to increase prosperity for so many industries," he added.

Wang calculates that a 600-billion-yuan ($96 billion) annual investment on railway construction could generate 3,000 kilometers of railway a year, which in turn could raise the country's annual GDP growth by 1.5 percentage points, and create more than 6 million jobs.

He said the country's tourism industry was likely to be one of those to most benefit from the high-speed rail development, and many in the sector have already been preparing to take advantage of the opportunities.

For instance, at Shijiazhuang Railway Station in the capital of Hebei province, which is the nearest major city to Beijing on the line, two new squares are being built together with a tourist center.

"The goal is to promote one-day trips, and to try to convert 'passing-by' passengers into 'staying over' passengers, which will really help boost the local catering and hotel industries," said Wen Hao, the director of the city's tourism office.

Apart from increasing the flow of people into the cities, the railway will also greatly increase freight traffic, he added.

Although largely being seen as a passenger line, Wu Ruliang, director of the Logistics Association of Hubei Province, said his industry will benefit greatly from the new high-speed link, and expects the cost of express delivery to drop by at least 50 percent as a result of its opening.

Officials from the Ministry of Railways have said the new route will release cargo transport capacity on the old line between Beijing and Wuhan by 20 million tons a year.

Wu added that with 95 percent of highways and 65 percent of class-A roads now installed with toll gates, the logistics industry will view rail transport as an altogether more appealing prospect than road from now on, given that toll costs currently account for a third of all logistics costs.

"The opening of the service means the logistics industry will enter a new era of high-speed rail transport," Wu said.

Xiao Jincheng, the director of Land Development and Regional Economy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission, added that Shijiazhuang will be brought much closer to the economic region dominated by Beijing as a result of the new link, given that it will now be just an hour away from the capital.

It will be one of many locations along the route to benefit from the development of what officials are calling "city clusters".

One of the largest will be created along the Beijing-Wuhan section — the Central Plain area which ties in the city of Wuhan with Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan. Analysts believe the area could become as economically important as the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, and Bohai Economic Rim.

Xiao said conditions are perfect for many cities in the central regions to grow into truly world-class city clusters, but that the satellite cities surrounding Wuhan and Zhengzhou also need to keep pace.

Yang Xiaohua, a researcher with Hubei Academy of Social Sciences, added that Wuhan, in particular, will be fashioned into a hub for the country's high-speed passenger transport network, given its location right in the heart of the network.

His expectations echoed the development plan for the central regions, published by the State Council, which aims to build Wuhan and Zhengzhou into national transport hubs.

"The central region city cluster may turn into a new growth engine for China," Yang said.

The debut of the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed railway on Wednesday marked another significant step in China's plan to develop a high-speed rail network.

With the opening of the line, the world's longest high-speed rail track, China now has more than 9,300 km of high-speed railways in operation. Below are facts about the country's high-speed railway development:

The State Council, or China's cabinet, approved the Medium and Long-term Plan for Railway Network in 2004, paving the way for the country to start development of high-speed railways -- railroads capable of accommodating trains with a traveling speed of 200 km per hour and beyond.

High-speed trains traveled for the first time on April 18, 2007, when bullet trains running at 200-250 km per hour were put to use on several tracks, including the Beijing-Harbin, the Beijing-Shanghai and the Beijing-Guangzhou lines.

The country's first high-speed railway, linking the Chinese capital Beijing and the neighboring port city Tianjin, was inaugurated on Aug 1, 2008, with trains traveling at a speed that could reach 350 km per hour.

An adjusted version of the Medium and Long-term Plan for Railway Network came into effect on Oct 31, 2008. According to the plan, the total operation mileage of the country's express passenger railways will exceed 50,000 km by 2020, covering almost all Chinese cities with a population of 500,000 or above.

The country's backbone high-speed rail network will be comprised of four north-east lines and four east-west lines, according to the plan.

The four north-east railways will connect Beijing with metropolises like Shanghai and Guangzhou as well as the northeastern cities of Shenyang, Harbin and Dalian. They will also link southeastern coastal cities such as Hangzhou, Fuzhou and Shenzhen.

The east-west lines will bridge the Beijing-Guangzhou and Beijing-Shanghai high-speed routes and extend the network to western cities like Xi'an, Lanzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing and Kunming.

On Dec 26, 2009, the 1,069 km-long Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway was put into service. It was China's first long-distance high-speed rail track.

On Dec 3, 2010, a CRH-380A train set a new speed record of 486.1 km per hour on a test run on the 1,318-km Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, which officially started operation on June 30, 2011.

On July 23, 2011, a high-speed train slammed into a stalled train near the eastern city of Wenzhou, resulting in 40 deaths and 172 people being injured. The accident, which was blamed on faulty signaling equipment and mismanagement, led to a nationwide rail safety check, speed reduction for bullet trains and stagnation in high-speed rail construction.

The country cautiously resumed construction and operation of high-speed railways this year. Fixed-asset investment in railways rose 3.1 percent year on year to 506.97 billion yuan (81.1 billion U.S. dollars) during the first 11 months of 2012, according to Ministry of Railways data.

The State Council adopted the 12th five-year plan for transportation system development in March this year, which plans for more than 40,000 km of express railways by the end of 2015.
 

Following a series of successful tests, the Chinese government has announced that the longest high-speed rail network in the world is scheduled to start taking passengers on December 26, according to Reuters.

The link between Beijing and Guangzhou runs for 1,428 miles and is expected to cut rail travel time between the cities to less than ten hours, as compared to the twenty hours plus the journey currently takes. Trains will travel on the high-speed track at speeds of 186 m.p.h., and the opening of the line is seen by some transport analysts as a commitment by the government to ensuring that engineering resources are deployed in a number of public projects, a matter of some importance as the Chinese middle class continues to evolve.

Intense competition
"A second-class train ticket on the line, which winds through major inland Chinese cities, including Zhengzhou, Wuhan and Changsha, costs 865 yuan, while a first-class ticket costs 1,388 yuan," noted Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. "Competition from the new railway line for airlines operating Beijing-Wuhan and Beijing-Zhengzhou flights will be intense."

Rail investment in China slowed after a high-speed train crash in 2011, raising some concerns within the country about the safety of a bullet-train system, especially considering the increase in passenger numbers as a result of continued economic growth. High-speed rail has always been on the engineering agenda for the government, which has cast envious glances across the East China Sea to the successful, and world-renowned, system employed in Japan.

Although the line will be officially open for service on the day after Christmas, some parts of the track have been operating for some time. Government officials confident that an investment in rail will help reduce the current bottleneck in cargo transport and increase the level of funding for commuter rail in China's ever-growing urban areas, despite some private concerns over safety.

Effective measures
"We have developed a full range of effective measures to manage safety," Zhou Li, head of the ministry's science and technology department, told reporters during a test run on the track. "High-speed railways are needed for national development, for the people and for regional communication. Many countries have boosted their economies by developing high-speed rail."

The Chinese Ministry of Railways expects to spend billions of yuan in the next 12 months into improving the current system while beginning the engineering research process of extending lines to Hong Kong and possibly even Russia. Sources at the Ministry told state media services that the government had already approved 25 separate rail projects, with a combined estimated cost of $157 billion, although it was unclear exactly how these would be funded.

Following the fatal crash at Wenzhou in 2011, caused by a stranded high-speed rail train being hit by another after a lightning storm, government investment dropped off and state media reported that the government was to cut over $80 billion from the railway budget. However, it seems to have had a change of heart in 2012, with conservative estimates showing that there has been a 250 percent increase in rail networks as it looks to reverse a slowing economy.

Private investment option
According to Bloomberg, rail travel in China loses the government money every year, and while the option of private investment has been mooted, there are some who are skeptical that a national high-speed rail network will become a reality in the near future.

"Government-driven investment has quick effects on boosting growth in the short term," said Yuan Gangming, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think-tank based in Beijing. "But you can’t rely on investment to drive growth forever."

Chinese train manufacturers are seeing their exports increase quickly this year as the reputation of domestic innovations becomes stronger around the world.

China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Co Ltd, one of the country's two leading train manufacturers, announced earlier this month it had signed an agreement with Pakistan's Ministry of Railways to sell 640 million yuan ($102.7 million) worth of locomotives to the country.

That came a week after the State-owned enterprise won a bid to provide $400 million worth of electric locomotives to South African Transnet SOC Ltd, a large rail, port and pipeline company in that country.

That deal marked the first time Chinese electric trains have been introduced into the African market, and was the biggest order for equipment of this sort that a Chinese train maker has ever received from overseas.

"Considering this new opportunity in the African market, CSR will push forward its rail transportation equipment business and broaden its cooperation with local companies in Africa," said Xu Zongxiang, general manager at CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co Ltd.

CSR said that apart from product exports, the first batch of which will be delivered by the end of 2013, it will also provide technology used in the manufacture of electric locomotives to South Africa.

The promotion of technology in China's train-manufacturing industry has received a large amount of recognition in the international market.

China North Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corp, the country's second-largest train maker, received four patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month.

"This breakthrough patent grant in the US shows that CNR's technological innovation has reached a new high," said Xie Buming, general manager at CNR Institute.

"Technological innovation is the main way for the advanced Chinese rail transportation equipment industry to become more internationalized," Xie said.

By the end of November, CNR had applied for 90 patents abroad, the most among Chinese suppliers of rail equipment.

In November, CNR's Dalian Locomotive and Rolling Stock Co Ltd signed an agreement with Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Corp to sell it 23 diesel locomotives.

CNR said its entry into the Hong Kong market will help it move further into the international premium market and gain recognition from customers around the world.

CNR and CSR have been exploring overseas markets at a fast pace in recent years.

In the first half of the year, CNR's revenues surged by 108 percent from a year earlier to 4.48 billion yuan in the international market, an amount that made up 10 percent of the enterprise's total income, according to a CNR financial statement.

In the first six months of 2012, CSR's overseas business revenues increased by 95 percent year-on-year to 4.8 billion yuan. Foreign business is the source of about 11 percent of the company's total business, data from the company show.

From the start of the year to December, the value of CSR's overseas orders had reached nearly $1.7 billion. CSR has also won bids to undertake railway projects in Malaysia, Turkey and Singapore in the first half of the year.

The rail line comprised of 292-km section in China and the remaining 293-km section in Kazakhstan. They were joined at the Korgas Pass in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Construction of the Chinese side of the railway cost $962 million, railway officials said.

The rail line is expected to ease the burden of the Alataw trade pass, where the first China-Central Asia railway traverses. It handles 15.6 million tonnes of train-laden cargo a year.

Ticket prices on the new high-speed rail line linking Beijing and southern Guangzhou City are set in accordance with the market, the Ministry of Railways has said in response to claims they are too expensive.

Tickets for the 2,298-kilometer line, the world's longest high-speed rail line which goes into full operation on Wednesday, start from 865 yuan (US$139). The most expensive seat, in the luxury business lounge, is 2,727 yuan.

In comparison, China Southern Airlines Co, which flies A380 superjumbos on the three-hour route, offers full-price economy tickets at 1,700 yuan excluding fuel surcharge.

"We have taken into consideration passengers' affordability while setting prices. It's normal for someone to think that prices are too high, and we also have people who think the price level is appropriate," said Ma Mingzheng, deputy general manager of the Henan branch of the Beijing-Guangzhou railway.

Ma, speaking during a test run with journalists, also said that rates were on trial basis, and may be subject to adjustment.

Bullet trains on the line can run at an average speed of 300 kilometers per hour, Xinhua news agency reported, shortening travel time from the capital to the Pearl River Delta to about eight hours from the previous 24.

China is accelerating railway investment again after it introduced new safety measures following a train crash in Wenzhou that killed 40 people in July 2011. Railway investment as of October rose almost 250 percent from a year earlier as the government stepped up fiscal measures to help growth.

"Government-driven investment has quick effects on boosting growth in the short term," Yuan Gangming, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "But you can't rely on investment to drive growth forever."

Yuan said China had a "great leap forward" in spending on railways since 2008 and this is expected to "normalize" in coming years with the completion of major lines such as the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed link, Bloomberg News reported.

The line will be extended to Hong Kong in the future, Bloomberg said.

The line winds through major inland Chinese cities, including Wuhan and Zhengzhou and competition from the new line for airlines operating Beijing-Wuhan and Beijing-Zhengzhou flights will be intense, China's state television reported.

China Southern is offering discounts up to 73 percent and Air China is offering a 57 percent discount for flights between Beijing and Wuhan on Wednesday, according to company websites.

The railway ministry didn't publish a total investment amount for the high-speed line because it was developed in parts and then connected. The Wuhan-Guangzhou section, which is 1,069 kilometers long and began operating a year ago, cost 116.6 billion yuan.

The 1,318km Shanghai to Beijing link, which opened in June 2011, cost 220.9 billion yuan.

Zhao Chunlei, deputy head of the ministry's transport bureau, said ticket prices on high-speed lines were at appropriate levels based on a market survey.

Chinese government officials advising Thailand on the development of its high-speed train network have suggested that it begin with a 54km route linking Bangkok and Ayutthaya.

Transport Minister Chadchat Sittipunt met recently with Chinese officials who advised him on the network.

They suggested that the Bangkok-Ayutthaya route be a good starting point as it would fall in line with the government's push to have the ancient capital serve as host for the 2020 World Expo, Mr Chadchat said on Friday.

Thailand is competing with other countries to host the expo following the success of the Kingdom's pavilion at this year's World Expo in South Korea.

The route proposed by the Chinese officials would terminate at Phachi station in Ayutthaya.

The government has been studying setting up potential long-haul high-speed lines from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and Bangkok to Nong Khai.

These were tabled at a recent meeting between Thai and Chinese officials.

The Bangkok-Chiang Mai route initially was set to use trains that travelled between 250-300kph.

However, the Chinese team studying high-speed rail development in Thailand suggested that faster trains travelling at 300kph would be more appropriate for the route, even though they would cost 20 billion baht more.

They reasoned that higher fares could be charged for the faster trains.

Costs for the construction of this route are estimated to be about 300 billion baht.

The 615km Bangkok-Nong Khai route is estimated to cost about 298 billion baht. The construction of the line is also aimed at facilitating freight transportation linking Thailand, Laos as well as China.

China is interested in bidding for the two projects and is ready to compete against other countries to build the high-speed train system.

Officials from the country said it can build the system for 460 million baht per kilometre, Mr Chadchat said.

A round of bidding is expected to take place next year, Chula Sukmanop, chief of the Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning, said.

The prices of high-speed rail tickets are not going to rise before the Lunar New Year holiday next February, Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo said yesterday, adding that the ministry would conduct a comprehensive review of the system’s pricing mechanism.

“We currently have no plan [to raise ticket prices],” Mao said.

Mao made the announcement at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee to review the high-speed rail’s budget and construction funds for next year.

While Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) had just welcomed its 200-millionth passenger earlier this month, the operator faced mounting criticism at the committee.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-tse  said the system had failed to reach its target of 150,000 passengers per day because ticket prices are too high. He added that fares are even higher than those of the Beijing-Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong High Speed Railway in China that was launched on Wednesday.

He said that THSRC should lower fares to boost the occupancy rate.

DPP legislators Yeh Yi-jin  and Kuan Bi-ling  also opposed raising ticket prices.

Yeh said there would be high-speed rail stations in Yunlin, Miaoli and Changhwa counties by 2014. With the addition of these three new stations to the route, the travel time on the high-speed rail from Taipei to Kaohsiung would increase by 30 minutes if the train stops at every station, he added.

While residents in Taipei, Greater Taichung and Greater Kaohsiung can expect express or semi-express trains every 15 minutes, those in Chiayi and Greater Tainan have to wait for the train for 30 minutes, he said.

“The high-speed rail has become a low-speed rail. Shouldn’t the tickets then also become cheaper?” Yeh said.

Kuan said that writer Liu Ka-shiang recently complained in a letter to the Chinese-language Apple Daily that he found the situation in a rail car with unreserved seats was so chaotic that the entire car appeared to be in a state of anarchy.

Even though the company has offered various discounts to passengers who book in advance, also known as the “early-bird package,” Kuan said that many customers complained that the cheaper tickets tend to be sold out quickly.

She said the contract between THSRC and the Bureau of High Speed Rail (BHSR) allows the company to raise ticket prices should the consumer price index (CPI) rise by 3 percent.

However, the Ministry of Economic Affairs had said that an increase in the CPI this year occurred because the government raised the electricity and gas prices, she said.

“It [the CPI increase] was the government’s fault and using it as a reason to raise the ticket prices of the high-speed rail would be simply unacceptable,” Kuan said.

She added that, according to her calculations, the THSRC overcharged passengers in several railway sections. Those traveling between Chiayi and Hsinchu, for example, were charged NT$25.1 more per person.

In response, Mao said that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications supervised THSRC operations based on its contract with the government and its proposed financial plan.

Even though the company began to generate a profit last year, Mao said that the profit is mainly used to pay off company debts.

According to Mao, THSRC has accumulated financial losses of about NT$70 billion (US$2.3 billion) and collective loans of about NT$30 billion.

Aging Mahtab Jan (75) has never seen train except on television. Jan along with other hundreds of villagers of Hiller Shahabad village in south Kashmir's Qazigund area on Thursday squatted on the railway tracks, though to stop the first trial run to the country's longest dream tunnel project, which connects the Kashmir valley with the rest of the country.

The 11 km-railway track, which cuts through the foothills of the Pir Panchal mountain, has not only bridged the two passes of the mountain but infused a sense of hope of prosperity and development among the villagers along the tracks, who are for the first time witnessing a running train.

"We have provided land from the rich and famous rice bowl of our area. We will not allow trial run to happen till we will get a station for local villages of Hiller Shahabad," said Jan, who joined the chorus of slogans "Narai takhbeer, Allah Akbar, train ko wapas karoo (God is great, return the train).

The excited and impatient villagers stopped the first trial run for hours together, demanding a halting point for a local village.

Indian Railways senior official AP Mishra failed to convince the protesting people and decided to call off the run. "We have to see the feasibility first," said Mishra.

Known for apples, walnuts and strawberry, Qazigund residents see themselves closer to the markets of Punjab and Delhi now.

"Our goods will need not to take any detour now. The train will end cumbersome loading and unloading of our goods from one mandi to another. We will connect to Punjab and Delhi markets directly when the railway project is finalised," said Javeed Shah, a government employee.
Far off villages like Kapran, which is more than 100 km from Srinagar, dreams of sending their daughters to Srinagar colleges. "It will definitely reduce the cost of travel and save time. We can even send daughters to Srinagar for higher education," said Jan.

The tunnel accomplishes a dream project of former prime minister IK Gujral, who laid the foundation stone in 1990s, and of former prime minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee, who declared it a national project, the tunnel is an engineering marvel. "This outstanding tunnel is 100% waterproof and equipped with fire fighting system throughout the entire length of tunnel.
"The methodology adopted for construction of this tunnel is by New Australian Tunneling Method (NATM) where the geological stress from the surrounding rock is used to stabilize the tunnel hole. It is one of the challenging and marvelous projects in Indian civil engineering history," said Indian Railways officials in Srinagar.

The Rs. 1300-crore tunnel is bound to be a major tourist attraction after the 2.75 km Jawahar tunnel on Srinagar-Jammu highway. The new tunnel is second longest in Asia after Chinese one. The tunnel passes 440 metres below the existing Jawahar Tunnel. With the speed of 100 km per hour, it will take around seven minutes to cross the tunnel.

Earlier, prime minister Manmohan Singh flagged off Qazigund-Baramulla railway track within the valley. But the tunnel through the Pir Panjal will finally connect the valley with the plains in Jammu and the rest of the country. The tunnel is likely to be inaugurated next year.

"The Pir Panjal Tunnel is a major part of Udhampur - Srinagar - Baramulla Broad rail line project. It connects the Bichleri valley at the south side with the Kashmir valley on the north side. The nearest town in south and north side is Banihal and Qazigund respectively," said railway officials.

The entire project between Dharam, across the Jawahar tunnel, and Qazigund in the valley is 56.54 km, which comprises of 14 tunnels of total length of 44.50 km and 48 numbers of major and minor bridges.

Bombardier is our top speculative  growth idea for 2013. This is potentially the best stock in our portfolio, grossly undervalued because it is French Canadian, and family-controlled.

Further, the stock is ignored by most analysts, as it is hard for single-industry analysts to quantify the value of a company that combines both rail with air transport.

It was called a "buy" by UBS Canada because of its second collaboration accord with China's Commercial Aircraft Corp. over product development on cockpit machine interfaces, electrical systems, and other technology.

While no orders have been booked, the collaboration opens the way to Bombardier selling its C-series planes in China. The Swiss bank estimates as many as 350 Bombardier planes could be sold to China yearly over 20 years, a total of 7000 aircraft.

Moreover, the Canada firm has already locked up 38% of the Chinese market, UBS' Hilda Maraachlian wrote. Her 12-month target for Bombardier is $5.50 per share as it gets airborne in China.

BDRAF may also get some rail contracts next year despite the current Chinese government's decision to put the brakes on fast passenger train spending in 2012. Next year a new team arrives in Beijing. Meanwhile BDRAF is signing huge monorail construction and equipment deals from Riyadh to S?o Paulo.

Its third quarter report was mixed with sales lower (big ticket items are lumpy) down to US$4.3 billion while profits rose 9% to $192 million.

In the nine-months, its net income fell 10% to $584 million or 32 cents per share. This stock is ripe for take off. And while you wait it pays a 3% dividend.

The first subway line to cross the Yangtze River, China's longest waterway, will open Friday in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei province, local authorities said Thursday.

Trains will start running at 10 a.m. Friday at a speed of 80 km per hour, the municipal government said in a press release.

The trains' route is 50 minutes long, passing through a 27-km tunnel that links Wuchang and Hankou, two major urban areas in Wuhan, the release said.

Trains will only take three minutes to run under the Yangtze River, it said.

The subway line will be Wuhan's first, expected to transport 500,000 passengers daily with 26 trains scheduled to run every six minutes.

The 6,300-km Yangtze River, which originates in northwest China's Qinghai province and traverses through 10 provinces and municipalities before flowing into the East China Sea, is a major transport link between west and east China.