YRD to receive over 90b yuan in investment for railway construction

Workers lay tracks on the waterside intercity railway south of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province. [Photo/CCTV News]

More than 90 billion yuan ($13.2 billion) is planned to be invested in railway construction in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region in 2023, China Railway Shanghai Bureau Group announced at a recent work meeting.

The railway authority said that the year 2023 will see five new railway lines put into use, including the waterside intercity railway south of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu province and the one linking Jinhua and Ningbo, both in Zhejiang province, as well as the start of construction on another five.

Efforts will also be made to ensure the smooth progress of 22 ongoing projects including the Hangzhou-Wenzhou high-speed railway and the Shanghai- Suzhou-Huzhou high-speed railway, officials said.

The group invested 108.9 billion yuan in infrastructure construction in 2022 and the amount has been kept above 80 billion yuan for seven consecutive years.

By the end of 2022, the in-operation railways in the YRD region totaled 13,749.7 kilometers, including more than 6,700 km of high-speed railways. Bullet train services cover all prefecture-level cities in the region, except Zhoushan, an island city in Zhejiang province.

In the next three years, 2,950 km of railways are expected to be newly built in the region, including 2,500 km of high-speed railways.