The second high-speed rail between Shenzhen and the Guangzhou will be built to link the airports in the two cities.

The trip between the urban areas of Shenzhen and Guangzhou will take 15 minutes if a maglev rail, which is designed to run at 600 kilometers per hour, is constructed.

According to the bidding notice for the planning of the second GZ-SZ intercity railway released by the Shenzhen Development and Reform Commission last week, maglev technologies will be used on the line.

The commission said the plan is still in the preliminary study period and hasn’t been filed yet. The bidding is to initiate research on maglev related issues, such as the present situation of maglev technologies, the roles of a GZ-SZ line, passenger flow, route design, investment estimates and operation costs.

The distance between the urban areas of the two cities is about 150 kilometers and takes about two hours to travel by car, 30 minutes by high-speed rail and one hour on the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Intercity rail.

The newly planned high-speed rail connects Huangpu in Guangzhou, Dongguan CBD and the Qianhai area of Nanshan in Shenzhen, which lie in the core nodes of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen S&T Innovation Corridor.

The high-speed rail is part of the Shenzhen-Yongzhou high-speed rail, the second high-speed rail between Guangdong and Hunan. Guangdong is trying to apply to the State authorities to include the Shenzhen-Yongzhou high-speed rail into its next round of rail network planning, with the goal of putting the rail into operation in 2030.

At the 2018 Guangzhou Design Forum, Chen Xiangsheng, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that the second high-speed rail will be designed to run at 600 kilometers per hour, nearly double the speed of the present GZ-SZ-HK high-speed rail.