WORK on the Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-speed Railway will start this year, according to a bidding notice released on the official website of the Guangzhou Public Resources Trade Center recently.

    The rail is designed to run at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour with 12 stations.

    It will cut the trip between Shenzhen and Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, to two hours when the rail line is finished in 54 months.

    The bidding notice showed that the 432-kilometer rail line will start from Ganzhou in Jiangxi Province and go southward through Xinfeng, Longnan, Heyuan, Dingnan, Longchuan, Heyuan, Boluo, Huizhou and Tangxia in Dongguan before it connects with Shenzhen North Railway Station.

    The Ganzhou-Shenzhen high-speed rail line is part of the high-speed Nanchang-Shenzhen line, which will span 880 kilometers from Nanchang to Shenzhen. Travel time between the two cities could be cut to less than four hours after the rail is completed in 2020. It will also be connected with the Xiamen-Shenzhen railway to allow access to coastal Fujian cities.

    The Shenzhen-Nanchang line is part of the Beijing-Kowloon High-speed Passenger Line and will play a significant role in stimulating development of northern Guangdong and Jiangxi.

    The 2,400-kilometer Beijing-Kowloon High-speed Passenger Line starts from Beijing and goes south through Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Anhui, Hubei, Jiangxi and Guangdong, before ending in Hong Kong.

    With the completion of the Beijing-Kowloon high-speed railway, it will take only about seven hours to go to Beijing from Shenzhen. Currently, it takes about 10.5 hours to travel to Beijing from Shenzhen on the other high-speed railway going through Guangzhou. (Han Ximin)