China, already home to the world's largest high-speed rail network, opened a new high-speed railway to traffic on Monday, connecting Xi'an, the provincial capital, and Ankang City in northwest China's Shaanxi.

The Xi'an-Ankang High-speed Railway slashes travel time between the two cities from about three hours in the past to around 45 minutes.

The newly built main line of the railway has a total length of about 171 kilometers and a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour. The line starts at the Xi'an East Station, crosses the Qinling Mountains and connects to the Ankang West Station with a total of five stations along the route.

"The launch of the Xi'an-Ankang high-speed railway will further unlock the freight capacity of the Baotou-Xi'an and Xi'an-Ankang conventional rail lines, effectively facilitating the southward transport of bulk commodities such as coal and chemical products from northern Shaanxi. This will provide robust transport capacity to support national energy logistics and help reduce overall logistics costs across society," said Nan Yue, director of the planning and statistics department of the China Railway Xi'an Bureau.

In addition to the Xi'an-Ankang route, three other major high-speed rail lines were opened to traffic on Monday in China, including the country's northernmost high-speed railway in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast.