(Yicai Global) March 1 -- The 41.25 kilometer subway line linking Suzhou in Jiangsu province with neighboring Shanghai started trial operations today. It is Jiangsu’s first metro line to connect with the Shanghai Metro and China's first to cross an entire county-level city.

Suzhou Metro Line 11, which connects with Shanghai Metro Line 11, will start conducting tests with passengers onboard in the first half of the year, according to the city government of Kunshan, which comes under the administration of Suzhou. The new line will run normally but under supervision from June, it added.

Shanghai Metro Line 11 was extended to Kunshan in 2013. Five years later, construction work on Suzhou Metro Line 11 kicked off with total investment of CNY29.9 billion (USD4.3 billion). The line connects Kunshan's Huaqiao area in the east to Suzhou Industrial Park in the west.

Suzhou's gross domestic product totaled CNY2.4 trillion (USD347.1 billion) last year, ranking sixth among prefecture-level cities, mostly thanks to the Yangtze River Delta region's strong economy and education advantages and the spillover effect from Shanghai. Four of Suzhou's county-level cities made China's top 10 for GDP last year, with Kunshan the top-ranked for years.

Suzhou, famed for its classical Chinese gardens and canals, is also the prefecture-level city with the best cross-city commuting links with Shanghai, according to a report by Tongji University.

Kunshan and Taicang were the two county-level cities with the highest commuter throughput with Shanghai last year. They accounted for nearly 69 percent and 13 percent of Shanghai's total commuter inflow and 56 percent and 18 percent of the commuter outflow.

The continuous strengthening of the urban agglomeration effect between Suzhou and Shanghai has also increased the need for transportation and public services between the two cities.

The average daily number of passengers entering and leaving the three subway stations of Shanghai Metro Line 11 in Kunshan surged 134 percent to 62,000 in 2019 from 26,500 in 2013, with the highest daily passenger throughput reaching 82,700, according to Kunshan's official statistics.

Editors: Shi Yi, Futura Costaglione