Sections of the Beijing-Shanghai high speed railway will be linked together by the end of this year, Zhang Shuguang, chief of the transportation department at the Ministry of Railway told Beijing News. The railway will be completed before 2011, in time to begin operations by 2012.

The train has a designed speed of 350 kph, and it will only take about four hours to travel the 1,318km between China’s two leading cities. Currently, it takes about 10 hours on the fastest train and a ticket costs about Rmb500. Last year, experts estimated that the ticket price on the new Beijing-Shanghai railway would be Rmb600-800, compared with the current price of an airline ticket between the two cities of some Rmb1,130.

Construction of the new Beijing-Shanghai railway began in April 2008 with a total investment of Rmb221bn.