Bohai Strait Undersea High Speed Rail May be Built: Chinese Media

Posted by david on Jan 20, 2015 in Blog | 0 comments

This has been brewing for some time and hopefully it gets into the 13th Five-Year Plan.  Currently, it is indeed a pain to get from Dalian to Yantai, unless you fly, but that’s just as much a hassle.

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An ambitious high-speed railway to run beneath Bohai Sea may be taken into consideration when the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s economic planner, decides its 13th five-year plan (2016- 2020), 21st Century Business Herald reported on Tuesday.

Zhang Wufeng, head of the NDRC in Shandong province, said it has agreed to “consider” and “support” the project that would connect Lushun in Dalian city, Northeast China’s Liaoning province, with Penglai in Yantai, situated in Shandong.

It now takes over 10 hours to travel the over-1000-kilometer land route between Lushun and Penglai, which are separated by Bohai Sea and located on the Liaodong and Shandong peninsulas respectively. The proposed underwater high-speed railway would shorten the distance to over 100 kilometres while the travelling time would be reduced to 40-50 minutes, said Wang Mengshu, academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and tunnel expert. Wang added that the rail link will run at 250 kilometers per hour according to its design.

The connection will promote economic development in the region, especially in provinces with advanced steel industries like Liaoning, Hebei and Shandong, and enhance economic interaction among Shandong, Liaoning, Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, say experts

It is predicted that by 2020, the potential passenger flow volume between the two areas will reach about 300 million, with the figure for the underwater high-speed rail to hit 180 million to 240 million. It is calculated that the first phase of the project might cost 200 billion to 250 billion yuan ($32.1 billion – 40.2 billion).

– english.eastday.com