High-speed railway offers a convenient, comfortable and efficient way to travel.

For Cantonese people, travel times are getting shorter and shorter. Now 19 cities in Guangdong province are already linked through the high-speed railway network, with construction currently underway for the other 2 cities, Heyuan and Meizhou.

Currently, there are 6 high-speed railway lines in the province: Wuhan-Guangzhou, Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong, Xiamen-Shenzhen, Guiyang-Guangzhou, Nanning-Guangzhou and Shenzhen-Zhanjiang. Starting from Guangdong, travelers can take high-speed trains to 20 other provinces nationwide with 10 hours at most.

With the Xiamen-Shenzhen, Nanning-Guangzhou and Guiyang-Guangzhou highspeed railways now in operation, the ‘distance’ between the Pearl River Delta and these regions has shrunk significantly. It now takes much less time to travel from Guangzhou to other neighboring provinces. For example, the travel time between Guangzhou to Nanning has been reduced from 13 hours to merely 3 hours, to Changsha from 9 hours to 2 and a half hours.

The railway rush in the province did not begin until the implementation of the reform and opening up policy. The railway operating mileage in Guangdong had reached 1871 kilometers as of 2007, up by 86.5percent on 1978.

By the end of 2017, China’s high-speed railway network had topped 25,000 km in total mileage, accounting for 66.3percent of global network mileage.

It is expected that all cities in Guangdong province will be accessible by high-speed railway by 2020.

According to Qian Chunyang, a deputy to the National People’s Congress and also the chief engineer with the Guangzhou Railway Technology Development Institute, (a research institute under Guangzhou Railway Group Corp.) the high-speed rail network will reach a length of 2,319 kilometers in Guangdong by 2020, an increase of approximately 50 percent on the present length. “By then, a network will have been established, connecting Guangzhou and Shenzhen to other Pearl River Delta cities within a one-hour circle,” added Qian.

Author: December Yu

Editor: Simon Haywood