A major railway in China transporting coal from the country’s northern production hub to consumers in the south has gone into operation, state owned news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
The Haoji railway, which links China’s biggest coal production region Inner Mongolia to Jiangxi province in the south via central provinces including Hubei and Hunan, will significantly cut coal transportation times, Xinhua said.
Construction of the line, which has a planned capacity of 200 million tonnes a year, began in 2015 and involved a total investment of over 193 billion yuan ($27.1 billion), according to a report in the China Daily newspaper.
The railway is also expected to help reduce transportation of the commodity by trucks on the road, part of Beijing’s campaign to fight air pollution.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Hallie Gu and Dominique Patton; Editing by Jan Harvey)
