New high-speed railway to strengthen ties on Belt and Road

A high-speed railway will be built connecting Weifang and Yantai, both in east China’s Shandong Province. The project is scheduled to start at the end of next year, according to a Beijing News’ interview with the China Railway Design Corporation on Oct. 27.

The Weifang-Yantai high-speed railway, an important section of the planned high-speed railway along the coast of Bohai Bay, is set to have an operating speed of 350 kilometers per hour and will shorten the travelling time between Beijing and Yantai, a port city on the Shandong Peninsula, from five and a half hours to about three hours.

The high-speed railway, which is expected to begin operations in 2020, will link Yantai, Qingdao and Weifang, as well as the adjacent towns of Laizhou, Longkou, Zhaoyuan and Penglai.

The planned Bohai Bay coastline high-speed railway, once finished, is expected to play an important role in deepening regional integration. The 5,800-km coast is home to nearly 20 cities, over 60 ports and thousands of enterprises, and connects three city clusters in northeast China’s Liaoning Province, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and Shandong.

Also, the Weifang-Yantai high-speed railway is seen as an important branch of the second Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway which meanders to the east of the current one, along the coastline of the Bohai Bay and the Yellow Sea.

Certain important port cities to the Belt and Road Initiative, such as Rizhao in Shandong, a bridgehead of the Eurasian Continental Bridge as a starting point of railways extending westwards to Central Asia and Europe, will be better connected by the second Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, strengthening the ties between the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.