Five inter-city rail-track routes will be constructed in the economically developed Yangtze River Delta region in east China during the next 15 years, said a Chinese official.

The construction plan was approved by the State Council during an executive meeting held in March, said Li Qinghong, chief of thepreparatory group for Yangtze River Delta Inter-City Railways Company, while addressing the third China international summit of urban track transport held in Shanghai on Monday and Tuesday.

The five routes are Nanjing-Zhenjiang-Wuxi-Suzhou-Shanghai, Shanghai-Jiaxing-Hangzhou, Hangzhou-Shaoxing-Ningbo, Changzhou-Jiangyin-Changshu-Suzhou and Suzhou-Jiaxing, with the mileage totaling 815 km.

The planned rail-track routes will form a regional transport network to facilitate a quick flow of passengers among different cities inside the Yangtze River Delta, said Li. The travel speed on the routes will be between 250 km and 300 km.

By 2020, most of the cities in the Yangtze River Delta will be reached within one or two hours, and the journey between Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, and Shanghai, for instance, will onlytake 80 minutes.

Passenger flow in the Yangtze River Delta, where the urbanization rate is more than 60 percent, totaled 2 billion last year. The figure will go up to 3.05 billion in 2010 and 5.5 billion in 2020.

It is estimated that 450 million passenger flow in the Yangtze River Delta will be borne by the inter-city track routes by 2020.

Source: Xinhua