The railway line was the first one designed for a maximum speed of 380 km/h in commercial operations. The non-stop train from Beijing South to Shanghai Hongqiao was expected to take 3 hours and 58 minutes, making it the fastest scheduled train in the world, compared to 9 hours and 49 minutes on the fastest trains running on the parallel conventional railway. However, at first trains were limited to a maximum speed of , with the fastest train taking 4 hours and 48 minutes to travel from Beijing South to Shanghai Hongqiao, with one stop at Nanjing South.