China's railway authority has proposed a Silk Road high-speed railway connecting the country's northwest region to West Asia via Central Asia, a plan it said would overcome the cross-border connectivity problem of different rail standards.
中国铁道部门提议建设经由中亚、连接中国西北部和西亚的丝绸之路高速铁路，该计划将克服不同铁路标准的跨境连接问题。
He Huawu, chief engineer of China Railway Corp, put forward the proposal at a Thursday forum on the One Belt, One Road Initiative hosted by China Civil Engineering Society.
本周四由中国土木工程学会主办的一带一路论坛上，中国铁路总公司总工程师何华武提出该提议。
His proposed route was from China's Urumqi and Yining to Almaty in Kazakhstan, then to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, Tashkent and Samarkand in Uzbekistan, Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and finally blending into West Asia's network through Teheran, Iran.
该路线从中国乌鲁木齐、伊宁出发，途经哈萨克斯坦的阿拉木图、吉尔吉斯斯坦的比什凯克、塔什干、乌兹别克斯坦的撒马尔罕、土库曼斯坦的阿什哈巴德，最后通过伊朗的德黑兰到达西亚铁路网。

The northeast-southwest line would be complementary to the existing railway network in central Asian nations, which mostly run southeast to northwest toward Moscow, He said. What's more important, it could get rid of the incompatibility between this region's wide-gauge track systems and China's standard-gauge system.
何表示，东北、西南路线将是对中亚国家现有的铁路网络的一个补充，其中大部分是从东南部运行至西北部直至莫斯科，至关重要的一点是，它将使得这些地区宽轨距的铁路系统与中国的标准轨距系统相兼容。
For years, the 1.52-meter track standard adopted in Central Asia has been a headache for logistics managers because it is not based on the 1.435 meter standard track adopted in China and most other parts of the world. Changing gauges at the border takes days for cargo and significantly cuts railway transport's competitiveness against shipping by sea.
多年来，中亚地区采用的1.52米轨距标准对物流经理来说是个大麻烦，因为这和中国的1.435轨距标准及世界其他地区的轨距标准不同，在边境地区变换轨距要花几天时间，对于货物运输来说，与海上运输相比，铁路这一运输方式的竞争力就稍显弱势了。
It is unlikely now to persuade those countries to change their existing railways, He said, but the high-speed rail he envisions along the new route would connect seamlessly to China's network and other regions. That's because the worldwide standard for fast rail is the 1.435 meter variety, so a new line could be built based on it.
说服这些国家改变他们现有的铁路系统是不可能的，但是他所设想的一带一路沿线的高铁将实现中国和这些地区的无缝连接，这是因为快轨的国际标准轨距是1.435米，新铁路将以这一标准进行建设。
"The Khorgos station bordering Kazakhstan last year handled less than 17 million metric tons of cargo running at full capacity, but beyond the station, the east-west annual cargo transportation capacity is 100 million tons," He said. The bottleneck undermined the idea of a large-capacity corridor.
“在与哈萨克斯坦接壤的霍尔果斯站，去年处理的满负荷运行货物不到1700万公吨，但却超出了车站负荷，而东西走向的年货物运输量达1亿吨”，何表示。这一瓶颈阻碍了建设大容量运输走廊的想法。
"Increased container traffic and sea container traffic moved by land instead could justify the cost of building the line," he said.
“转移至陆上运输的集装箱运输和海上集装箱运输，正好可以平衡该线路的建设成本”，何表示。
According to He, container trains and passenger trains could run on the same route. The only difference would be speed. A passenger train could run at 250 to 300 kilometers per hour, while a container train could run at 120 km/h.
集装箱列车和客运列车可以在同一条路线运行。唯一的区别只是速度，客运列车以250至300公里的时速运行，而集装箱列车的运行时速是120公里/小时。
Other experts cautioned that an Asian railway link has been under discussion for a long time and has not materialized mainly because of various geopolitical concerns of the countries alone the route.
一些专家警示，亚洲铁路网络的建设已经讨论了很长一段时间，但并未实现，主要原因是各国在路线上单独的地理位置。