The much-anticipated Yancheng-Nantong High-Speed Railway is about to begin construction. What development opportunities will this major artery, which carries the expectations of more than eight million Yancheng people, bring to Yancheng, and what important significance does its construction hold? Relevant officials from three departments of Yancheng—the Municipal Railway Office, the Commerce Bureau, and the Tourism Bureau—explained the benefits of the Yancheng high-speed railway project from different perspectives.
　　“The construction of the high-speed railway network will bring major benefits to investment promotion. Especially for businesspeople from Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and other places, shorter travel times will provide more convenience for outside investors,” said the head of the Investment Promotion Division of the Municipal Commerce Bureau. At present, out-of-town businesspeople mainly come to Yancheng for inspections via expressways; coming from Shanghai or Nanjing takes more than three hours, with considerable time wasted on the road. Once the high-speed rail era arrives, Yancheng will be more favored by domestic and foreign investors, attracting more and more outside investors to inspect Yancheng and invest there.
　　After the Yancheng-Nantong High-Speed Railway is completed, it will take only one hour to travel from Yancheng to Shanghai, greatly shortening the distance between Yancheng and Shanghai and Zhejiang. These three provinces (municipalities) will almost become one province. The official said the Yancheng-Nantong High-Speed Railway will make business activities highly frequent. At present, due to transportation constraints, business exchanges between Yancheng and Shanghai and Zhejiang mostly rely on road and air transport, giving people the feeling of going on a long business trip; therefore, many people are reluctant to leave the province for business exchanges and instead seek partners within the province. The opening of the Yancheng-Nantong High-Speed Railway will make leaving the province more convenient and time-saving, which will make business exchanges and cooperation between Yancheng and other places more frequent.
　　The official believes that once the high-speed railway is completed and opened, when Yancheng holds business exchange activities locally or elsewhere, many inland businesspeople and enterprises will feel impelled to participate. Departing in the morning and returning in the evening—this convenience will greatly increase their enthusiasm for participation.
　　When local businesspeople and enterprises participate in business activities, first, they can absorb the production capacity of Yancheng's export enterprises and help these enterprises gradually transform; second, local businesspeople and enterprises can learn from and draw on the business and management experience of excellent enterprises in Shanghai and Zhejiang, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of local enterprises; enterprises, research institutions, universities and other business organizations will frequently carry out a series of cooperation and exchanges due to the opening of the Yancheng high-speed railway, and the benefits and results brought by these exchanges may be beyond our imagination and prediction.
　　Promoting the development of the Jiangsu coastal economic belt
　　“At present, Yancheng's railway development is clearly below the national and provincial average, with few route miles and low grades. There is only one conventional-speed railway—the Xinyi-Changxing Railway—which has seriously constrained economic and social development and convenient travel for the public. For Yancheng, implementation of the Yancheng-Nantong Railway project is even more urgent,” said Yang Hua, deputy director of the Municipal Railway Office. The Yancheng-Nantong Railway project is of great significance for implementing the national coastal development strategy, supporting the integration of the Yangtze River Delta regional economy, accelerating Jiangsu's achievement of a higher-level moderately prosperous society, and promoting the development of the Jiangsu coastal economic belt. Building this project is also an urgent need to strengthen connections between coastal urban axes, promote economic interaction and development among cities along the route, optimize the road network structure, improve the overall transport capacity of the corridor, and enhance the level and quality of regional railway transport services.
It is understood that the Yancheng-Nantong Railway line starts from Yancheng Station on the Xuzhou-Suqian-Huai'an-Yancheng Railway, runs south through Dafeng District, Dongtai City, Hai'an County, and Rugao City, and ends at the under-construction Nantong West Station on the Shanghai-Nantong Railway. The newly built main line is about 156.6 kilometers long and has 6 stations. In addition, 13.2 kilometers of up and down connecting lines between the Nantong Station and the Nanjing-Qidong Line will be built for the introduction of this line, a new Nantong EMU depot will be constructed, and some bridge works on the Nantong West-Zhangjiagang section will be implemented simultaneously (including ballasting for the Shanghai-Nantong Railway Yangtze River Bridge). The planned long-term transport capacity is 40 million passengers per year in one direction. The project construction period is 4 years, with a total investment of 26.28 billion yuan (including the main line, connecting lines, and EMU depot).
　　“The speed target of the Yancheng-Nantong Railway has been adjusted and upgraded to 350 kilometers per hour, which will further promote exchanges and interaction between Yancheng and Shanghai, Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou and other cities,” said Yang Hua, deputy director of the Municipal Railway Office. The Yancheng-Nantong Railway is an important channel for Yancheng to integrate with Shanghai and southern Jiangsu. According to statistics, more than 20,000 people travel daily between Yancheng and Shanghai, Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou, and Zhejiang Province, with the number multiplying during holidays. In the future, after the high-speed railway opens, it will provide a fast, safe, and economical travel option and will also generate more induced passenger flow.
　Tourism welcomes new development opportunities
　　“At present, Yancheng is accelerating the construction of the '5+1' high-speed railway network. Direct access via the Yancheng-Nantong High-Speed Railway to Shanghai and the Hangzhou metropolitan area and Ningbo metropolitan area, via the Xuzhou-Suqian-Huai'an-Yancheng High-Speed Railway to the Nanjing metropolitan area and the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hefei-Hangzhou development belt, and via the Yancheng-Taizhou-Yixing High-Speed Railway to the Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou metropolitan area will all become reality. Yancheng will change from a previously transport-remote area into a coastal hub, which also makes it possible to link tourism routes with surrounding cities,” said Zhu Zhengjin, deputy researcher of the Municipal Tourism Bureau. He believes this will have a profound impact on the number of tourists, source structure, and travel mode development in Yancheng and Nantong, and tourism will welcome new development opportunities.
　　Zhu Zhengjin said that after the high-speed railway is completed, it will effectively activate the tourist source markets of the Yangtze River Delta and northwestern Jiangsu, expand the radius of the tourist source market, and the number of tourists from major cities along the route to Yancheng is expected to increase several times. In the coming years, not only will the number of tourists to Yancheng from Beijing, Xi'an and other places increase substantially, but with the next opening of high-speed railways toward Shanghai and Hangzhou, the Shanghai-Hangzhou region will also become an important tourist source for Yancheng. At the same time, it will be more convenient for Yancheng tourists to travel elsewhere. High-speed rail will not only promote a substantial increase in passenger flow but will also spur the emergence of a large amount of high-end business tourism, conference tourism, and exhibition tourism.
　　Zhu Zhengjin believes that the speed and convenience of high-speed rail compress travel time, expand travel space, improve the quality of tourist travel, and extend tourists' stay time at destinations, thereby stimulating the potential demand of a large number of long-distance tourists and truly realizing “fast travel, slow touring.”
　　“Yancheng and Nantong and their surrounding areas have many tourism resources. After the high-speed railway opens, distances between regions can be shortened, and interregional cooperation will undoubtedly become an inevitable trend in tourism development,” Zhu Zhengjin said. Yancheng will carry out cooperation with cities along the high-speed railway. At the same time, as the only city in northern Jiangsu selected into the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, Yancheng is also conducive to strengthening regional tourism cooperation with cities “within the group,” making it convenient to integrate tourism resources, create premium tourism routes, and provide tourists with better services and travel routes.