New high-speed rail section to link Xiong'an, Shangqiu

A 552-kilometer section of the Beijing-Hong Kong high-speed railway linking Xiong'an in Hebei province with Shangqiu in Henan province will open on Monday, China State Railway Group said on Friday.

Designed for speeds of up to 350 kilometers per hour, the new section will cut the fastest travel time between Xiong'an and Shangqiu to 2 hours and 27 minutes.

The section runs through Hebei, Shandong and Henan provinces and has 16 stations. Eleven counties and county-level cities, including Renqiu, Suning, Linqing and Yuncheng, will gain access to high-speed rail services for the first time.

Up to 64 high-speed trains will operate on the section each day during the initial stage. New cross-line services will connect Beijing West Railway Station with Hefei and Huangshan North, while a new service will link Xiong'an with Shanghai Hongqiao.

The new section will connect with several existing high-speed railways, including the Shijiazhuang-Jinan, Jinan-Zhengzhou and Xuzhou-Lanzhou lines, further expanding the high-speed rail network in the region.

The Beijing-Hong Kong high-speed railway is one of the main north-south routes in China's "eight vertical and eight horizontal" high-speed rail network. Sections between Beijing and Xiong'an and between Nanchang and Jiujiang have yet to be completed.