A new high-speed rail link between Shanghai and Changsha is set to open by the end of his year, the Shanghai Railway Bureau announced this weekend.
The new services will allow a five-hour high-speed journey between the two cities (versus the current seven hours), according to Shanghai Daily, and will be about 10 hours quicker than the standard K533, K137 and K1373 services making the trips.
The 931-kilometer section of line between Changsha and Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province is part of the Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Railway. That will become fully operational in 2017.
The new section will connect with the Shanghai-Hangzhou High-Speed Railway by the year end, providing a faster link between the middle of China and the Yangtze River Delta, said officials.
The section will pass through Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces.
While the trains can reach 350 kilometers per hour, the operational speed will be limited to 300km/h, said the bureau.
Another section of the anticipated Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Railway, running from Nanchang to Changsha, just went into operation on September 16.
China boasts the world’s longest high-speed railway network, tracks of which stretched over a distance of 10,000km by the end of 2013. By 2020, China aims to have constructed 25,000 kilometers of HSR track connecting all of its major cities, costing an estimated grand total of 300 billion USD upon completion, Forbes reports.
[Image: Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed train via Xinhua]
