JD Logistics launches its first rail freight service in Southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region, linking Lhasa with Xining in Northwest China's Qinghai Province. Photo: JD Logistics

JD Logistics has launched its first rail freight service in Southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region, linking Lhasa with Xining in Northwest China's Qinghai Province. The company said on Wednesday that the service cuts parcel delivery times into and out of Xizang by an average of two days, with some outbound shipments eligible for next-day delivery.

The train takes 20 hours and 30 minutes each way on the Qinghai-Xizang Railway and mainly carries local specialties and consumer goods. The service adds regular rail capacity alongside air freight as parcel volumes rise during Double 11 shopping festival. It also gives producers in Xizang another way to ship apples and other local products to markets across China during the winter.

The new service uses a 1,956-kilometer railway, nearly half of which runs at an average elevation above 4,000 meters. The line brought rail service to Xizang when it fully opened in 2006. By its 20th anniversary in July, it had recorded 104 million passenger trips and carried 824 million tons of freight, according to China State Railway Group. 

Rail links have since extended farther across the region. The Lhasa-Nyingchi line, Xizang's first electrified railway, recorded more than 6.25 million passenger trips and carried more than 2 million tons of freight in its first five years. Fuxing trains now connect Lhasa and Nyingchi in as little as three hours and 49 minutes. In September, Shannan station on the line began handling freight, giving nearby counties a rail hub for incoming supplies and outbound products such as local medicinal herbs and plateau-grown fruit and vegetables. 

The regional postal regulator said in July that a delivery network combining rail, road and air transport now serves all 74 county-level areas in Xizang. Postal outlets and passenger transport routes help carry parcels onward to villages in farming and pastoral areas. 

Global Times