Smooth and comfortable—that’s Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s description of his train-taking experience on a super-sleek, silver-bodied high-speed train decorated with a flash of red, after arriving at Padalarang Station in West Java Province, Indonesia, on September 13.
The train, which had departed from Halim Station in Jakarta, ran at full speed on the 142-km Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway—which connects Indonesia’s capital and the country’s fourth largest city Bandung, with a design speed of 350 km per hour. Thanks to these high-speed trains, travel time between the two cities will be cut from more than three hours to around 40 minutes.
It is the first overseas high-speed railway project to fully use Chinese railway systems, technology and industrial components, and will be the first high-speed railway in Indonesia and Southeast Asia at large.
The railway, which Widodo said would officially start commercial operation in early October, stands as a flagship project and a shining example of the infrastructure connectivity achieved through the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
In September 2013, during a speech at Nazarbayev University
