(Yicai Global) June 28 -- China's self-developed high-speed train the Renaissance EMU has been in operation for one year now and has transported 41.3 million person-times of passengers in a new benchmark for the global high-speed rail industry, China Railway said in an announcement yesterday.

China Railway, which led and organized the development of the train, owns the full proprietary intellectual property rights to it. The standard speed of the CR400 series is 350 kilometers per hour.

The EMU train has greatly improved tourists' travel experiences, and market demand has been strong. The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail route, which was the first to implement a commercial operation of the Renaissance EMU, reported the average passenger load factor (PLF) of 94 percent, 17.5 percent higher than that of other rail sections, China Railway said. Its departure and arrival punctuality rates are 98.7 percent and 94 percent, respectively. 

The number of high-speed rail routes that operate the new EMU has been gradually rising. China will implement a new train operation diagram, and the number of trains dispatched will increase from 114.5 to 170.5, covering 23 provincial capital cities.

China Railway is also developing more models of this type. Among them, an intelligent train with the speed of 350km/h is expected to complete the process of debugging, trial, and verification in the first half of next year. Two other models with top speeds of 250km/h and 160km/h, respectively, are also under development.

A long-formation Renaissance EMU model, consisting of 16 cars, will go into operation for the first time on July 1 on the Beijing-Shanghai route, and soon run on other railways, such as the Beijing-Guangzhou and Shanghai-Kunming lines.

Editor: Ben Armour