Is the most populous county in Jiangsu finally going to have a high-speed railway?

According to the release from Shuyang, on November 3, Wang Rui, Secretary of the Shuyang County Party Committee and Secretary of the Party Working Committee of Shuyang Economic Development Zone, chaired a promotion meeting for the preliminary work of the Xinyi-Huai'an Railway. Relevant county leaders attended the meeting. The meeting pointed out that the Xinyi-Huai'an Railway carries the "high-speed rail dream" of 2 million local people. Under the high-level promotion of the Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Government as well as the Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, with the strong support of relevant national, provincial and municipal departments, and through the joint efforts of the whole county, the project has made breakthrough progress and was recently officially included in the national 15th Five-Year Railway Plan.

The meeting emphasized that high-speed rail is a livelihood project that serves people's travel, and also a core engine that empowers regional development, which is of great significance for Shuyang to build an important regional city. It is necessary to quickly establish an efficient and smooth promotion mechanism, focus on core links such as project proposal, feasibility study demonstration, preliminary design, and construction drawing design, cooperate to complete all preliminary work, continue to strengthen upward docking and strive for support, and make every effort to promote the early commencement of the Xinyi-Huai'an Railway, so as to inject strong impetus into the high-quality development of the county economy.

Shuyang is affiliated to Suqian, located at the junction of Xuzhou, Suqian, Huai'an and Lianyungang. It is the county with the largest registered population in Jiangsu, ranking first in Northern Jiangsu in terms of total economic output and 8th in Jiangsu Province — at the end of 2025, Shuyang County had a registered population of 1.949 million and a permanent resident population of 1.6529 million; its GDP in the same year reached 164.215 billion yuan, accounting for 1.15% of the province's total.

During the National Two Sessions last year, a deputy to the National People's Congress submitted the "Proposal on the Early Commencement of the Huai (Shu) - Xin Railway". It stated that as the National Hometown of Flowers and Trees, National Book Trading Center and National Home of Wood-based Panels, Shuyang County has strong demand for freight transportation. There are nearly 400,000 local migrant workers working outside and nearly 250,000 people coming from other regions for employment and entrepreneurship, and the local people have a strong willingness to travel.

At present, the Lianyungang-Huai'an-Yangzhou-Zhenjiang Railway, Xuzhou-Suqian-Huai'an-Yancheng Railway and Xuzhou-Lianyungang High-speed Railway all pass around the periphery of Shuyang, exactly forming a "Shuyang-surrounding High-speed Rail Circle". Facing the realistic dilemma of having no high-speed railway station, Shuyang County took the lead in opening 3 customized passenger bus lines directly to surrounding high-speed railway stations, becoming the first county-level city in China to launch convenient high-speed rail shuttle buses for the public.

In fact, Shuyang has been fighting for a high-speed railway much earlier than many people expected. In 2016, the Jiangsu Provincial Railway Office had completed the project bidding and the compilation of the pre-feasibility study report for the Huai'an-Xinyi Railway. In June 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Multi-level Rail Transit Plan for the Yangtze River Delta Region", and the Xinyi-Huai'an project was listed as an implementation project in the 14th Five-Year Plan.

However, there was no sign of construction after that. One major reason is that in 2021, the General Office of the State Council issued a new regulation on the national railway planning and construction, requiring strict control over the construction of parallel lines of existing high-speed railways. In principle, no new parallel lines shall be built if the capacity utilization rate of the existing high-speed railway is less than 80%. Due to the under-construction Weifang-Suqian High-speed Railway project and the Xuzhou-Suqian-Huai'an-Yancheng Railway, the construction of the Xinyi-Huai'an Railway did not conform to the relevant national policies.

In October last year, the relevant person in charge of the Jiangsu Provincial Railway Office publicly stated that the "urgency of construction of the Xinyi-Huai'an Railway needs further demonstration". The provincial government is actively communicating with relevant national departments to strive for the inclusion of the Xinyi-Huai'an Railway in the 15th Five-Year Railway Plan, and at the same time further demonstrate the urgency of the construction of the Xinyi-Huai'an Railway from the perspective of full utilization rate and saturation, hoping to promote the early commencement of the Xinyi-Huai'an Railway.

At present, the Xinyi-Huai'an project has been included in the national 15th Five-Year Railway Plan. According to the information from this preliminary work promotion meeting, the government will focus on core links such as project proposal, feasibility study demonstration, preliminary design, and construction drawing design, cooperate to complete all preliminary work, continue to strengthen upward docking and strive for support, and make every effort to promote the early commencement of the Xinyi-Huai'an Railway.

This article is from the WeChat official account "City Evolution Theory", written by Yang Huan, and published with authorization from 36Kr.