Construction of the Hefei-Wuhan Railway, the first high-speed line in central China, has been completed after three years, the government of Wuhan City said on Tuesday.

The 350-km line cost 16.8 billion yuan (US$2.46 billion). It will reduce travel time from eight and a half hours to two hours. Trains will run at 200 km per hour, the Wuhan government said.

The line is the middle part of China's first east-west high-speed rail link, the Shanghai-Wuhan-Chengdu Railway.

The Ministry of Railways plans to have 120,000 km of lines in service by 2020, of which 16,000 km would be exclusively for passenger services. At present, China has more than 79,000 km of rail lines. To meet the 2020 target will cost about 5 trillion yuan, the ministry said.

(Xinhua News Agency December 31, 2008)