By the end of this year, ten new railway lines with a total length of 2,500 kilometers will be put into operation, the Chinese state railway reported. This improves the performance of the high-speed network.
Around 553 new high-speed trains will start operating at the same time. This increases the transport capacity on the Chinese high-speed network by nine percent.
Thanks to the new lines, around a dozen cities will be connected to the Chinese highways for the first time. Among them are places like Fuxin and Chaoyang in Liaoning Province, Chengde in Hebei, Tongliao in Inner Mongolia, Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang, Rizhao in Shandong, Lianyungang and Yancheng in Jiangsu, Yaan in Sichuan and Lijiang in Yunan.
The innovations will shorten travel times massively. In future, rail travelers will need three hours less to travel from Harbin to Mudanjiang. The drive from Mudanjiang to Beijing is even shorter by seven hours. The new timetable will enter into force on 5 January 2019.
