It was a titanic project, and not an easy one to achieve. The new TGV line linking the new West Kowloon station in Hong Kong to those in Shenzhen and Guangzhou (Canton) will have been three years late and cost 10.8 billion, a third more than the initial sum.
The line is operated by MTR Corporation, the Hong Kong rail giant that manages all the links in the former British colony. Travelling at a speed of 200 km/h, it will considerably reduce journey times to southern China. It now takes 19 minutes to Shenzhen and 48 minutes to reach Guangzhou, compared with two hours previously. Some trains even continue directly to Shanghai and Beijing. The Chinese capital is now just nine hours from Hong Kong, compared with 24 hours just a week ago... A total of 44 Chinese cities now have direct train services to the metropolis.
All in all, just over a hundred connections are offered daily between Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Three to four sleeper trains continue directly to Shanghai and a similar number leave Shenzhen directly to Beijing. There are also direct trains to major cities such as Chongqing, Guiyang, Nanning, Wuhan and Xian.
Border crossing formalities are carried out directly in Hong Kong, with passengers travelling to People's China having to submit to Chinese customs, immigration and police officials. The presence of the latter constituted a surprise for many residents of Hong Kong, triggering controversy. Under the mini-constitution governing the Hong Kong Special Region, law and order and security in the territory are normally ensured exclusively by the police forces of the SAR (Special Administrative Region). But this special legal status in no way detracts from the attraction that the arrival of the TGV in the heart of Hong Kong now represents.
The TGV line is part of a large-scale project to create an urban region called the Greater Bay Area, which includes Hong Kong, Macao, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai. The other major project of this new conurbation, which aims to become the economic and technological equivalent of San Francisco Bay or Tokyo-Yokohama, is the new bridge/tunnel that will provide land access between Hong Kong and Macao. With a length of 39 km, it will be inaugurated at the end of this year.
