North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region will see unprecedented railway construction this year to upgrade its coal-transport capacity.

Zheng Mingli, Railway Bureau Director of Hohhot city, the autonomous region's capital, said here recently that a number of new rail routes will be built this year, the most in nearly 50 years.

A 177-km-long electrified railway extending from the region's Ji'ning to the city of Zhangjiakou in northern Hebei province will be begin construction in June and is expected to shorten the travel distance between Hohhot and Beijing by 125 km.

Zheng said the new lines will include one to move coal out of Inner Mongolia. Construction of a 700-km-section of the line linking the western Inner Mongolia with the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is also expected to start this year.

A new, double track rail route linking Inner Mongolia's Baotou with Shenmu county in the northeast of Shaanxi province will also be built this year, said Zheng. He acknowledged that the new line will be one more crucial north-south railway corridor for coal transport.

In addition, construction of some other new railways extending from Inner Mongolia to the neighboring provinces is also progressing smoothly, said Zheng. Operation of these new lines in the years ahead will greatly release the region's pressure in coal transport, he added.

Inner Mongolia, one of China's main pastoral areas, has 223.4 billion tons of coal reserves, 22.3 percent of China's total coal reserves. There are six large coalfields in the region with verified coal reserves of 10 billion tons each.