A HIGH-SPEED rail line, the second between Shenzhen and Guangzhou, will be built between the airports of the two cities.

According to a draft plan for overall land development from 2018 to 2035 released recently by the Guangzhou government on its official website, the high-speed rail linking the Shenzhen airport in Bao’an and the Baiyun airport in Guangzhou will cut the trip to 20 minutes.

At present, Shenzhen and Guangzhou are connected by Guangzhou-Shenzhen intercity rail and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, a high-speed rail put into use in September last year.

The newly planned high-speed rail connects Huangpu in Guangzhou, Dongguan CBD, and Qianhai and Nanshan in Shenzhen, which lie on the core nodes of Guangzhou-Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Corridor. It will be connected with Hunan-Guangdong Second Passageway in the north and the East Lantau New Town in Hong Kong in the south. The high-speed rail is part of the Shenzhen-Yongzhou high-speed rail, which is the second high-speed rail between Guangdong and Hunan. Guangdong is going to apply to the State authorities to include the Shenzhen-Yongzhou high-speed rail in its next round of rail network planning and will try to put the rail into operation in 2030.

The high-speed rail has a spur line that connects to the Guangzhou-Heyuan high-speed rail at Zhishicheng Station.

It will have an interchange station with the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link at Huangpu Station.

At the 2018 Guangzhou Design Forum, Chen Xiangsheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the second high-speed rail will be designed to run at 600 kilometers per hour, nearly double the speed of the present Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link.

The Shenzhen transport bureau is also working on the plans for the second high-speed rail. If the speed of the train reaches 500 kilometers per hour, the trip between the CBDs of the two cities will be cut to 15 minutes.(Han Ximin)