Bohai sea underwater railway plan gets NDRC's support

A CRH bullet train travels on the Lanxin (Lanzhou-Xinjiang) High-speed Railway in Hami, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Sept 16, 2014. [Photo/IC]

A high-speed railway under the Bohai sea connecting Dalian in Liaoning province and Yantai in Shandong province is expected to be part of the country's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), said officials of the local economic planner, 21st Century Business Herald reports on Tuesday.

Zhang Wufeng, director of the Shandong Provincial Development and Reform Commission, said the rail link project, with an estimated investment of 200 billion yuan ($32.25 billion) will greatly shorten the distance and travel time between the two provinces of Liaoning and Shandong to around 100 kilometers in about an hour.

The current rail link between the two places is more than 1,000 km. The undersea project will also improve the travel efficiency between Dalian and Shanghai.

Zhang Zhiyuan, Director of Research Institute of Regional Economy from Shandong University of Finance and Economics, said the high-speed railway from Dalian in Liaoning Province to Weihai in Shandong Province will be an crucial project.

"The Cross-Bohai-Strait Channel can help create a transportation artery for East China, a combination of sea, air and land transportation networks. The project will also connect the Liaodong Peninsula, Shandong Peninsula and Jing-Jin-Ji (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) as a whole, promoting economic integration to push forward the economic development of North China and Northeast Asia," said Zhang.

Wang Mengshu, a tunnel expert with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the project took 20 years of research. Now the technological problems of building high-speed railways under the sea have been the solved. It's estimated that the speed of the train will be 250 kilometers per hour.

The Cross-Bohai-Strait Channel was first proposed by the State Council in 1992. Now the NPC is coordinating the building of the project. Liaoning, Shandong, Tianjin and Hebei are advancing the process of building the high-speed railway in the Bohai-Rim. The undersea rail tunnel in the Cross-Bohai-Strait Channel will be a component of the high-speed railway in the Bohai-Rim.