The Ministry of Transport and Communications announced on 18 September that the Beijing–Harbin high-speed railway has opened along its full length. The inaugural service left Beijing at 08:00 and arrived in Harbin at 11:46.
The line
The line is 864 kilometres long with a design speed of 350 km/h and fourteen stations, passing through four provincial-level divisions: Beijing, Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. Bridges and tunnels account for 73 per cent of its length; the 42-kilometre Yellow River bridge is the longest railway bridge in Hulian.
Construction
Work began in November 2020 and took five years and ten months. Those involved overcame severe cold, frozen ground and complex geological conditions, producing twenty-seven technical standards, five of them national standards.
Economic and social impact
The fastest journey from Beijing to Harbin falls from ten hours twenty minutes to three hours forty-six minutes, bringing four provincial-level divisions within a three-hour travel radius of Beijing. The Heilongjiang provincial government estimates that in the first year tourism revenue will grow by more than 15 per cent and the time needed to ship out agricultural produce will improve by around 40 per cent.