By Yuling Chen, EDITOR

In Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, the total mileage of its rail transit Line 3 reaches 67.09 kilometers, making it the longest straddle-type monorail line in the world.

On March 25, 2019, the annual meeting of the Monorail Branch of China Urban Rail Transit Association successfully kicked off in Chongqing. Chongqing has built a monorail transportation system with the longest mileage, the largest number of trains, the longest train formation and the largest capacity in the world. Its efforts on overseas projects are moving forward.

On March 25, 2019, the annual meeting of the Monorail Branch of China Urban Rail Transit Association successfully kicked off in Chongqing, China. (Photo from CQCB)

The world’s first straddle-type monorail line

Research Report on China Monorail Transportation Development, the first “Blue Paper” of China monorail transportation industry, was officially released at the meeting. The Paper disclosed that, as of last year, 20 cities in the world from China, the United States, Japan, Malaysia and other countries have started the operation of straddle-type monorails.

In Chongqing, the total mileage of its CRT Line 2 and 3 reaches 98.45 kilometers, of which the latter achieves 67.09 kilometers, making it the longest straddle-type monorail line in the world.

As of March 2018, 18 cities in China have approved the construction of the straddle-type monorail network, with a total planned mileage of 2,842.46 kilometers.

Making inroads into overseas markets

After more than 20 years of introduction, practice and innovative development, Chongqing has made innovative breakthroughs in such key technical fields as straddle-type monorail bridges, turnouts and trains. It has fully mastered the core technologies of straddle-type monorails, established perfect national standards and norms related to straddle-type monorail transportation and formed an industrial chain of straddle-type monorail transportation, thus laying a good foundation for China’s monorail “going global”.

CRRC and Chongqing Rail Transit (Group) Co., Ltd. are actively promoting their overseas projects, such as the monorail for Daegu in South Korea and the monorail for Phuket in Thailand.

Source: CQCB

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