Beijingcloserby15hourssoon

From: Shenzhen Daily

Updated: 2007-12-07 00:12

A TRAIN journey from Shenzhen to Beijing will take only eight hours after the Shenzhen-Guangzhou Express Rail is put into service in 2010. The journey to Beijing now takes at least 23 hours.

The new express railway will connect with another in Guangzhou for the Beijing leg. Plans for the express railways were contained in a five-year program released by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on Wednesday.

The Shenzhen-Guangzhou Express Rail, which is designed exclusively for passengers, will shorten the travel time to Guangzhou to 30 minutes. With an easy transit in Guangzhou, travelers will be able to continue on to Beijing in seven hours and 30 minutes, according to the detailed development program for the national rail network. It takes about 75 minutes to travel to Guangzhou by train at the moment.

Construction of the 105-kilometer express rail, which is costing 16.7 billion yuan (US$2.23 billion), started in 2005. It is due for completion in 2010, Thursday"s Daily Sunshine reported.

The new express line will start at the new Longhua Transport Terminal, extending through Shiyan, Guangming, Gongming, Dongguan"s Chang"an and Humen and end at the new Guangzhou Railway Station, according to the NDRC program.

With the fast pace of development in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), the existing Shenzhen-Guangzhou Railway has been operating at full capacity in recent years. There have been a number of prolonged delays this year because of track work and technical problems.

It is becoming increasingly urgent for a second railway connecting the two cities to guarantee smoother passenger flows. Based on the Shenzhen-Guangzhou Express Rail, there will be a rail network covering the rest of the PRD cities.

Trains running on the Shenzhen-Guangzhou Express Rail will travel at a speed of at least 200 kilometers per hour, enabling the journey to be completed in half an hour, the newspaper report said.

The Beijing-Guangzhou Express Rail will start at the new Guangzhou Railway Station and travel through Wuhan in Hubei Province before terminating in Beijing. Traveling time to Wuhan from Shenzhen will be shortened to five hours from the current 12 hours.

The Guangzhou-Beijing Railway is overloaded with passengers, particularly during peak travel periods such as the Spring Festival, or the National Day and May Day holidays.

There are more than 200 trains running on the railway every day.

"When the new one is completed, it will help relieve the pressure on the Guangzhou-Beijing Railway," said Song Chaoyi, deputy director of the NDRC"s Communications and Transportation Department.

After the new line is built, the old one will be devoted to cargo.

The express rails will provide another option for travelers after they are completed. Air travel is usually faster for long-distance journeys, but not very efficient when the time to travel from the airport to the city is taken into account. Most airports are located well outside downtown areas.

In addition, airlines usually require passengers to arrive at airports two hours prior to departure. For example, it takes three hours to fly to Beijing from Shenzhen but then there is the two-hour wait at the airport before departure and the 30 minutes" travel time from downtown Shenzhen to the airport. Altogether, it takes about six hours to arrive in Beijing.

 Shenzhen Daily