Green China
Residents fight maglev line
By Huang Yuli (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-09 15:14
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Home owners living near a proposed magnetic train line protest against the project on Sunday. Zou Hong / China Daily |
Neighbors fear the health costs of proposed magnetic trains
Hundreds of residents from alongside the capital's first planned magnetic levitation train line gathered on Sunday to collect signatures for a petition.
The disgruntled neighbors got together at Hanhe Road, outside the West Fourth Ring Road, to sign the petition against using so-called maglev technology in the capital.
Gao Jie, a resident of the Bisenli community and an IT office worker, is a member of the owners committee in her community and said it was the committee that initiated the petition.
"When it comes to the solid numbers, the report often uses words such as 'almost' and 'about', which may be acceptable in a news report but are not enough for an assessment report," she said.
"The impact on a household from a maglev train situated more than 10 meters away is less than that of a TV or a refrigerator according to the report. How is that convincing?"
Fu Zhizhao, a retiree who has lived in the Hailanzhongyuan community for more than five years, said she was worried that radiation from the proposed maglev line might cause health problems, such as cancer. She said her bedroom is about 30 meters from the proposed line.
The maglev line, if approved, will follow the existing rail route through the area.
"We are concerned about our children and our children's children more than we are about ourselves," said Zhang Chunsheng, who is also from the Hailanzhongyuan community. Her 20-year-old son is attending college and she is worried the maglev line might cause fertility problems in people in the long run.
Qi Fansan, a senior engineer with the Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signal and Communication, is a resident of the Bisenli community and said residents would like to see the line moved to a less populated area or built underground and not as a maglev line but as a regular subway.
"People can put up with the noise because the railway already exists but we don't want to be the ones being tested on," he said.
The Mentougou Line (also called the S1 Line) if built will be the first medium-and-low-speed maglev line in China - there is already a high-speed line in Shanghai.
The Mentougou Line will connect Shimenying in Mentougou district and Cishousi in Haidian district and extend for almost 20 km. The project will cost around 6.42 billion yuan to complete.
The western end of the line is set to begin operations before the end of 2013, according to a report in Beijing News.
Gao Yougang, an expert in environmental electromagnetism at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told METRO earlier that there are no clear standards for what is a safe distance from a maglev train.
No one was available to comment on Sunday when METRO called the China Academy of Railway Sciences.
Public feedback will be collected until Aug 13.