The Guangzhou-Shenzhen section of the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Express Railway will be completed in 2010, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.

The date was revealed by the Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission ahead of the Joint Conference on Guangdong-Hong Kong Cooperation.

The planned express line, designed to allow trains to run at 350 kilometers per hour, will link the three cities within an hour. The new rail link is expected to be an integral part of the inter-city railway network in the Pearl River Delta region.

It will link Hong Kong's West Kowloon to Shibi, Guangzhou.

The railway will cover a total distance of 104.6 kilometers, including 36.6 kilometers in Shenzhen and is expected to cost 16.7 billion yuan (US$2.45 billion) to build. A total of 6 billion yuan has already been spent. The new Shenzhen station has been designed.

Construction on the 10.8-km Shizhiyang Tunnel, part of the express railway project, started in November last year. The tunnel will connect Guangzhou and Dongguan, running under the Shizhiyang waters of the Pearl River estuary.

The newspaper also quoted commission sources as saying that work on a planned expressway linking Liantang in eastern Shenzhen and Hong Kong was expected to start next year or 2010. The expressway will also link with the Shenzhen-Huizhou and Shenzhen-Shantou ex-pressways.

Studies on a sixth checkpoint between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, which will be located in Liantang in Shenzhen and Heung Yuen Wai in Hong Kong's northeastern New Territories, have also been finished, sources also said.