A ten-kilometer railway tunnel has been completed in southeast
China's Fujian Province for a new bullet train service
that will be put into operation in 2008.
The railway runs beneath the Jimian Mountain inside the county
of Lianjiang.
"The Jimian Mountain Tunnel is one of the 53 tunnels required to
be completed for the construction of a railway connecting Wenzhou,
a port city in east China's Zhejiang Province, and Fuzhou, capital of
Fujian," said Zhang Zongyan, chairman of the board of China
Railways No. 12 Bureau Group Corp.
According to Zhang, 76 percent of the 300-km-long Wenzhou-Fuzhou
railway is inside Fujian Province, and so far, 80 percent of the
tunnels for the railway have been completed.
It is expected that the Wenzhou-Fuzhou railway will be finished
and put into service in June 2009, eight months ahead of schedule.
Construction began in December 2005.
Currently, there is no railway service between Wenzhou and
Fuzhou. It takes about six hours for a single journey between the
two cities by bus. But when the projected railway is completed and
put into service, a single journey between the two cities by train
will only take about two hours at most, according to Zhang.
(Xinhua News Agency May 14, 2007)