The Third Technical Seminar of NEAR2 Project (Shanghai) hosted byTongji University’s Urban Mass Transit Railway Research Institutewas held in the International Conference Center of Jiading Campus recently. About 40 experts from Germany, Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, India, Austria, Japan, Hungary, the United States and China attended the seminar. Professor XIE Weida, one of the participants of the research, said, “The success of the seminar indicates the significant role that Tongji University is playing in the NEAR2 (Network of European-Asian Rail Research Capacities) Project.”

Tongji University’s Urban Mass Transit Railway Research Institute participated in four of the five parts of this project. The research of Tongji is to investigate the current situation of the Eurasia railway transport in terms of technology, policy, market and cooperation to determine the shortages, issues and requirements of the system in order to prepare the final technical documentation. According to Prof. XIE, Tongji is undertaking the research of WG3 of Eurasia Railway technology. As the responsible agency, Tongji researchers are assigned to investigate several aspects such as strategy and economics, vehicle safety, training and education and to prepare documentation that will be evaluated by experts of technology and market economics. According to the requirements of the project arrangements, the research group of Tongji has proposed 14 recomendations including bogie dynamics, freight car bogies, traction system, braking system and locomotive gauge. They have analyzed the current technical state of these directions, put forward the fields that need to be further studied and initially formed the technical documentation required by the project.

Prof. XIE said that the Eurasia Land Bridge railway transport is one of the common concerns of countries in Europe and Asia, and a challenge to the current ocean transport between Europe and Asia. It was referred to in President XI Jinping’s proposal of building the Silk Road Economic Belt that he put forward again in his visit to Kazakhstan last September. The goal is to step by step get through the transportation passageway from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea and to form a transportation network connecting East Asia, West Asia and South Asia. In this year’s APEC meeting, President Xi proposed that China invest $ 40 billion to initiate the establishment of the Silk Road Fund and to provide financial support to the infrastructure construction of the countries along this “One Belt and One Road.” Meanwhile, the ultimate goal of the NEAR2 Project is to build a railway research network along the Eurasia Land Bridge, and to develop and promote the current research results with other research agencies, thus to form a persistent and productive collaborative-research pattern. Prof. Xie believes that there are bright prospects for Tongji to participate in this project.

Translated by May Language Studio based upon

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