CONSTRUCTION work on two new railway lines -- designed to slash travel times between coastal and inland areas -- started in Fujian Province on Friday.

One of the railways starts in Xiamen, a port city in Fujian Province, and runs 502.4 kilometers southwest along the coast to Shenzhen.

On completion in 2011, the railway will allow trains to travel at up to 200 kilometers per hour and the journey between the two cities will take less than three hours compared with 11 hours now.

The total cost of the project, about 41.7 billion yuan (US$5.6 billion), will be shared by the Ministry of Railways and the Fujian and Guangdong provincial governments, the China Daily reported Saturday.

The second major rail project launched Friday was a 603.6-km railway linking the Jiangxi provincial capital, Nanchang, with Fujian Province, with terminals at Fuzhou and Putian.

The 51.8-billion-yuan railway would open to traffic in 2012, "the first modern railway" to link Fujian Province with the hinterland, said Yu Kaiyang, director of the provincial railway construction office.

He said the new line would cut the traveling distance between Fujian and Jiangxi by at least 17 km.

(Xinhua)