Guangdong and Hong Kong will speed up construction a high-speed rail link to shorten travel times to Hong Kong and the new Disneyland attraction when it opens in 2005 or 2006.

The mainland, which has a population of nearly 1.3 billion, is expected to be the major source of customers for the Disney theme park in Hong Kong.

The planned rail link, which will be privately financed at an estimated cost of up to 14.8 billion yuan (US$1.79b), will cut travel times to less than 40 minutes from Guangzhou to Hong Kong via Shenzhen, said Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua.

The fastest land transport between Hong Kong and Guangzhou is a train that takes at least one hour and 45 minutes. The new project will likely use high-speed rail wheels as opposed to an earlier proposal for a magnetic levitation train.

"A magnetic levitation train could save another 10 minutes' travel time, but would it be double the cost of a wheel rail link," Huang said.

Plans to speed up the rail link project come on the heels of a separate proposal to build a giant road bridge linking Hong Kong with Macao and Zhuhai on the western side of the Pearl River Delta. Huang said the rail link was now at a more advanced stage than the bridge project.

The 29-km bridge is estimated to cost US$2 billion. A three-sided working group has been formed to further study the proposed bridge.

Construction also started last month on an economically important road bridge linking Hong Kong and Shenzhen, almost doubling the capacity of the three existing crossings.

Hong Kong attracted more than 6.83 million tourists from the mainland last year and the figure is expected to rise this year (2002).

Editor: Catherine