Guangdong has completed the first step in its aggressive plan to have one of world's most comprehensive regional rail networks, with the launch last week - after a year's delay - of a railway linking cities along the west bank of the Pearl River Delta to Guangzhou.
The first intercity railway in the western part of the PRD, the 143-kilometre Guangzhou-Zhuhai intercity rail line, is the start of a bigger network that will link all nine PRD cities in the next decade.
Song Jinsong , a regional planning expert close to the plan, said the network would take the PRD from 'the era of the highway' to 'the era of public transit'.
The China Railway Fourth Survey and Design Institute Group, which helped plan the PRD's intercity rail system, said the network would have 16 routes and about 1,500 kilometres of track by 2020.
Experts and officials say people will be able to travel between any two PRD cities in around an hour. It will when finished take about 50 minutes to travel from Guangzhou South Station, the terminal of the intercity rail network, to Zhuhai by train - compared to at least an hour and a half by bus.
Residents of Zhongshan and Jiangmen have welcomed the project because it means the two cities and Zhuhai will be connected by rail to Guangzhou and the cities on the PRD's east bank for the first time.
