Nantong–Shanghai railway


Nantong–Shanghai railway, abbreviated as Tonghu railway is a railway in China's Yangtze River Delta area, connecting Shanghai, the region's main city located south of the Yangtze, with Nantong in Jiangsu province, north of the river.
The railway is 143 km in length and traverses several county-level cities in Suzhou Municipality of Jiangsu along the south bank of the Yangtze including Zhangjiagang, Changshu and Taicang. The railway is also called the Shanghai-Suzhou-Nantong railway or the Husutong railway. Initially proposed as Shanghai–Nantong railway, construction works began in March 2014, and was expected to take five and a half years. The railway entered operations on July 1, 2020. The railway is designed to accommodate maximum train speeds of 200 km/h. and has reduced train travel time from Nantong to Shanghai to just over one hour.

Routing

The railway includes 137 km of new tracks, from Pingdong Station on the Nanjing–Qidong railway northwest of downtown Nantong to Huangdu railway station on the Beijing–Shanghai railway, in the northwestern part of Shanghai City. Anting being within 20 km from Shanghai railway station, the total railway distance from Nantong to Shanghai is under 160 km.
The railway crosses the Yangtze River over the new Hutong Yangtze River Bridge between Nantong and Zhangjiagang, a double-deck bridge with a 4-track railway on the lower deck and a 6-lane roadway on the upper deck. The bridge is the world's longest span cable-stayed road-rail bridge with the highest piers of a cable-stayed road-rail bridge. The bridge is the easternmost railway crossing of the Yangtze. Previously, the only railway crossing in the Yangtze Delta region was a freight-only rail ferry on the Xinyi–Changxing railway, between Jingjiang and Jiangyin, some 30 km upstream. The closet railway bridge is the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, over 200 km upstream. The new bridge thus greatly improves the railway connections between the Central Jiangsu and the Jiangnan, in particular Shanghai.
On its way between the new bridge and Anting, the railway has brought rail service for the first time to properous communities on the southern bank of the Yangtze such as Zhangjiagang, Changshu, and Taicang which had no railway connection.
In late 2019, the large Hutong Yangtze river bridge was completed, and the new line running from Anting west of Shanghai northwards to the river was nearing completion.