Chapter 1004 Railway Integration into the Grid
“my country’s railway system has many components, and the departments and enterprises are relatively mixed, including large state-owned railway companies, self-built railways by mining area companies, urban railways, regional railways, and other types of enterprises. Railways, special railways in agricultural areas, etc. ”
“The summary feature is that there are many large and small railways, difficult management, difficulty in connecting railways to the grid, and many other reasons. The national trunk railway network is mainly small railways and straight railways. There is no close connection between the railways and the main railways. "
"Among them, the mining area railways are the most typical, and their railway construction is restricted by resource distribution, especially in the south and central areas."
" The national trunk railway is the main artery of the East African railway network, while the branch lines and other types of railways are the capillaries. The primary problem facing East Africa now is that the connection between the capillaries and the main arteries is not smooth, which leads to blood, that is, logistics and passenger flow scheduling in economic development. Inefficient.”
These problems reported by the Ministry of Railways are all objective facts. In fact, among the railway systems of various countries, East Africa is already relatively good. The railway management of the European economic powers is the most sophisticated and the density is relatively high.
The worst thing is the American railways. Although the United States has a huge number of railways, they are completely capital-oriented. There are more than a thousand railway companies alone. In the absence of a unified and strong management organization, these large and small railways The company is in a serious situation of fragmentation.
The railway is not only related to economic interests, but also related to national defense, transportation, social and other fields. Take European countries such as Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which focus on the military use of railways and emphasize national control. Completely driven by economics.
So based on the long-term development of the railway system, the fundamental thing is to improve the efficiency of railway utilization, and at the same time meet the needs of economy, society, transportation, national defense and so on.
If you want to improve railway utilization efficiency and avoid resource waste, you need a coordinating agency to lead the balance and coordination of various railway uses.
Ernst asked Andre: "What are the Ministry of Railways' suggestions on how to improve the efficiency of railway utilization in our country?"
Andre took out the plan and introduced to Ernst: "Your Highness, as mentioned before In other words, information interaction is an important means for the railway system to further improve its potential. ”
“Although the railway network in East Africa is relatively developed, poor contact and communication between various nodes, or the inability to reach an agreement, will seriously hinder the improvement of railway utilization efficiency.”
“Assume that a family in Mbeya City The steel plant produces an additional 20,000 tons of steel every year due to technical reasons, but It is because of the lag in recording information in the original railway system that the raw materials cannot be transported, which will inevitably have a negative impact. However, how to construct a complete information exchange in the railway system can perfectly solve this problem."
"The current railway system. The mainstream communication methods are letters, emails and Telegraphs, radios and telephones, letters are the slowest in efficiency, and telegraphs and telephones have the highest usage rate. However, telegraphs and telephones are also subject to line constraints. For example, a flood disaster causes a regional power outage, resulting in the loss of communication between two stations. Easily triggering regional collapse of the railway system ”
"So ensuring multiple information communication methods and establishing a unified information processing platform are the main goals of our Ministry of Railways at the moment, including vigorously promoting the popularization of radio, a device that is less restricted by terrain, as a second means of communication for the railway system."
“And a unified information processing platform can achieve our country’s Organize the railway system, reduce intermediate links, and effectively respond to large-scale railway system collapse events. "
To put it simply, the Ministry of Railways wants to build a national independent railway communication system. In fact, similar systems existed in the past. , but the defense railway communication system, which is mainly a military line, played a huge role during the South African War.
The importance of national defense is self-evident, but the majority of railways are still in the economic and people's livelihood fields, so the new communication system mainly serves the economic and people's livelihood fields.
“If it is a new construction, will it cause a waste of resources?” Ernst asked.
Andre explained: “Our idea is not to rebuild a separate line, but to transform and upgrade the existing railway communication system. The existing communication system can be reused, but it will be further optimized. Newly constructed lines will definitely exist. But it is just to supplement it, accounting for less than 20%." Ernst nodded and said: "If this is the case, then this plan should be feasible. You should not rush to transform it first, but you should conduct further research and inspection to ensure that it is foolproof. Construction is going on later. This is a major event related to the entire railway system. We cannot rush into it. Even if it cannot be completed within the first five-year plan, it can be implemented in the second five-year plan.”
Andre nodded and said: "We have the same idea. After all, our construction tasks are also very heavy now. It is still relatively difficult to complete the construction of the new 50,000-kilometer railway during the First Five-Year Plan, so we will definitely not be able to come up with more." Energy. ”
In the decade of the 1990s, railway construction in East Africa barely reached 90,000 kilometers, so the 50,000-kilometer railway construction task has taken up most of the energy of the current railway system.
Of course, this goal is not difficult to achieve. After all, compared with the 1990s, the productivity level of East African railways has definitely improved significantly.
Andre continued: "In addition to the communication system, our second plan is to build a number of new marshalling yards in railway hubs and important economic production areas across the country to improve the efficiency of material allocation."
" Railways are not as flexible as roads, so many materials need to be redistributed uniformly and sent to corresponding areas through marshalling stations. In this regard, East Africa is worse than Europe.”
“Europe’s railway density is high and its population is high. The cities are densely populated, the level of economic development is high, and the freight volume is large, so the efficiency of railway utilization is also high. However, the construction of many cities in East Africa is even later than the construction of railways, which further increases the difficulty of urban development in East Africa.”
Too fast, so the demand for industries and materials in many cities has increased significantly, and urban development will naturally put forward higher requirements for the transportation industry, which makes the original transportation and regional economic development levels mismatched.
This large volatility will naturally affect the utilization efficiency of East African railways and cannot be eliminated at all. After all, there is great uncertainty in urban and regional economic development, especially in industrial and mining cities.
This requires the East African railway system to continuously adjust according to the fluctuation range to minimize the impact. This is actually a happy trouble.
After all, a country like Japan with only a few thousand kilometers of railways is not qualified to encounter such troubles as East Africa.
For a major railway country like East Africa, railway management is also the most difficult, especially when the railway pattern in East Africa has not been stabilized. After all, Ernst’s mid- and long-term goal is to build about 300,000 kilometers of railways. , East Africa’s railway mileage has not yet reached half of this target.
The only thing that can be determined is the construction of trunk railways. Trunk railways mainly serve national transportation and are less affected by various influences. However, this is not necessarily the case for branch railways. Due to various factors, their construction has great risks. Certainty.
“The ultimate goal of the railway department is to realize the integration of the national railway network, so as to realize the unified management of the railway system from top to bottom. In this way, information and resources can be fully utilized to ensure the overall smooth operation of my country’s railways. , to realize the reasonable allocation of railway freight and passenger transport, so that the utilization rate of the entire railway system will be greatly improved. ”
"This railway network will promote the progress of the national railways towards more standardized, efficient and reasonable goals. While ensuring the quantity of railway construction in our country, it will also enhance the quality of railway construction and provide better services for the development of the national economy."
< br>Ernst definitely supports this. Only by adapting to the development needs of the economy and other fields can we ensure the development potential of the East African railway and support the sustainable development path of the East African railway industry.
(End of this chapter)