Construction to start on Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei rail lines

BEIJING -- Construction on two intercity railways linking Beijing with neighboring Tianjin Municipality and Hebei Province will kick off by the end of this year, the company in charge announced on Thursday.

Trains on a 160-km line from Beijing to Tangshan City of Hebei will pass through Beijing's suburban Tongzhou District, Hebei's Langfang City and Tianjin's Baodi District, before reaching Tangshan.

Sharing the 80-km Beijing-Baodi section with the Beijing-Tangshan line, another 182-km line will connect Beijing with Binhai New District in eastern Tianjin.

The construction will be carried out by Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Intercity Railway Investment Co., Ltd, a firm founded last year by state-owned enterprise China Railway and the governments of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

The company said the construction of another two rail lines, a 112-km line linking Beijing Capital International Airport with a new airport in south Beijing and a 87-km line between the Hebei cities of Langfang and Zhuozhou, will start by the end of 2016.

Hao Weiya, company chairman, said the four lines will require a total investment of over 100 billion yuan ($16.12 billion), 10 billion of which will come from the government budget and the other 90 billion from elsewhere.

Operational intercity rail lines in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region currently stretch 118 km, with another 203 km under construction. With government plans to boost coordinated regional development, lines with a total length of 3,796 km will eventually link Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, according to Hao.