On August 1, the website of the Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission released the "Pre-approval Public Notice on the Feasibility Study Report of the Project from the Pearl River Delta Hub Airport to the Provincial Boundary Section of the Shenzhen-Nanning High-Speed Railway," with the public notice period from August 1 to August 3, 2023.

The feasibility study for the last unstarted section of the Guangdong section of the Nanning-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway is about to be approved, and construction is expected to officially commence in the near future.

According to the public notice, the project starts from the Pearl River Delta Hub Airport Station, passes through Foshan, Zhaoqing, and Yunfu, and reaches the Guangdong-Guangxi provincial boundary. The line is approximately 142 kilometers long, planned to be built to the 350 km/h standard, with two stations: Yunfu and Luoding North.

The estimated total investment of the project is 28.336 billion yuan, with a planned total construction period of 4 years, fully funded by Guangdong Province and the local governments along the route.

The newly built project from the Pearl River Delta Hub Airport to the provincial boundary section of the Shenzhen-Nanning High-Speed Railway has been included in the "14th Five-Year Plan for Railway Development" (Fa Gai Ji Chu [2021] No. 1948) and the "Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Infrastructure Interconnection Plan" (Fa Gai Ji Chu (2020) No. 830).

The Nanning-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway is the No. 1 infrastructure project for Guangxi's full integration into the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and it is also the third high-speed railway corridor between Guangdong and Guangxi after the Guiyang-Guangzhou and Nanning-Guangzhou lines. This project connects with the under-construction Zhuhai-Zhaoqing High-Speed Railway from the Pearl River Delta Hub Airport to Jiangmen section and the Shenzhen-Jiangmen Railway, jointly forming part of the Shenzhen-Nanning High-Speed Railway corridor.

The total length of the line is approximately 660 kilometers, of which the newly built Nanning-Jiangmen section is about 544 kilometers, and the under-construction Shenzhen-Jiangmen Railway is about 116 kilometers.

At present, the Nanning-Yulin-Cenxi (Guangxi-Guangdong provincial boundary) section within Guangxi and the Pearl River Delta Hub Airport-Jiangmen (Zhuhai) section within Guangdong of the Nanning-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway have both started construction, and the entire line is expected to be completed and open to traffic in 2027.

The construction of the project is needed to support the Greater Bay Area in radiating and leading the development of the greater southwest, to meet the needs of regional exchange and collaborative development, to improve the quality of railway passenger transport between Guangdong and Guangxi, to expand the capacity of the Guangdong-Guangxi corridor, and to fill gaps in the regional road network; it is of great significance for promoting the development of resources along the route, accelerating integration into the Greater Bay Area, and promoting coordinated high-quality development of the region.