China's high speed railway project is about to get faster. Officials say a trip between Beijing and Shanghai will be take less than four hours.
The Ministry of Railways says China has started construction of 35 passenger lines. Not only will the network reach more places, but passengers will get there faster.
Zheng Jian, chief planner of Ministry of Railway, says, "a trip from Beijing to Shanghai will only take four hours, and a trip between Beijing and Guangzhou will be six and a half hours."
Officials say by 2012, travel between most provincial capitals will be within eight hours. The exceptions are the capital of Xinjiang, Tibet and Hainan, due to the long distance.
New stations will go along with the new lines. By 2020, more than a thousand will be built or re-constructed. About 800 will be put into use by 2012.
The ministry says total length of railway network will exceed 110 thousand kilometers. This should put an end to the bottlenecks in China's railway transport.
(CCTV June 26, 2009)
