New high-speed rail bridges central, western China for coordinated development

XI'AN, June 30 (Xinhua) -- A Fuxing bullet train pulled out of the newly opened Xi'an East Railway Station Tuesday morning, marking the launch of the Xi'an-Shiyan high-speed railway, a major new transport corridor linking central and western China.

The railway has a designed speed of up to 350 km per hour and a total length of 257 km. It connects Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, with Shiyan in neighboring Hubei Province in the country's central region.

The line connects to the existing Wuhan-Shiyan high-speed railway, cutting the travel time between Xi'an and Wuhan, capital of Hubei, to 2 hours 41 minutes, down from the previous 4.5-hour detour route. The trip between Xi'an and Shiyan has been slashed from over 6 hours on conventional trains to barely an hour.

Mao Lei, chief designer of the project, described the route as a railway running through a "natural geological museum" as the proportion of bridges and tunnels along the line exceeds 90 percent.

Experts believe the railway will strengthen economic ties between western, central and eastern China, while providing new momentum for development along the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Enditem