The speed of metro trains in the city of Guangzhou are to reach 160km/h on two lines presently under construction, according to their builder, China Railway 22nd Bureau Group.
The lines will link the city with other population centres in the Pearl River Delta, including Zhuhai, Zhongshan and Dongguan. Line 18 will extend the system north and south, and Line 22 will run south to Shenzhen’s Guangmingcheng station.
Lines 18 and 22 are due to enter service later this year, when they will become China’s fastest metro routes, cutting the time taken to travel the 140km between Guangzhou and Shenzhen to about an hour.
Despite the designation, the new lines will be the system’s 13th and 14th routes.
According to the ECNS website, concreting work to a passage linking the two lines was completed Wednesday, indicating that work on the progress is nearing completion.
Last year, CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive Co delivered the first of the 160km/h subway trains to the Guangzhou metro. The metro will eventually run 40 of these, which are said to use advanced design, technological protocols based on big data and cloud computing.
The two lines are scheduled to open at the end of this year.
China Railway 22nd Bureau Group, formerly known as the China Railway Engineering Group, is based in Beijing and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Railway Construction Corporation.
Image: A train on Guangzhou’s Line 4 (Towermega/Public Domain)
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