A single trip from Guangzhou to Hong Kong will be reduced to 48 minutes when the high-speed rail connecting Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou opens in 2018.

The nine bullet trains manufactured by China Railway Rolling Corporation (CRRC) for the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL) were delivered to Hong Kong early last month, Securities Times reported.

XRL is a high-speed railway that connects Beijing with Hong Kong via Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Spanning 26 kilometers, the construction of the final phase of XRL, which connects Shenzhen to Hong Kong, was completed on Nov 18, 2016. It has a design speed of 250 kilometers per hour.

It is scheduled to be open to traffic by the third quarter of 2018, according to Deng Weiyong, general manager of the high speed rail section of Mass Transit Railway, HK's rail company.

The Guangzhou–Shenzhen section of XRL starts at Guangzhou South Railway Station and ends at Shenzhen Futian Railway Station. It went into operation on Dec 26, 2011 and is one of the busiest railways in China.

With a design speed of 350 km/h, it only takes 29 to 50 minutes for people to commute between the two cities, depending on the number of stops.