Upgrading of Chinese Mainland Gateway to HK to BeginThe upgrading of Luohu Checkpoint in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, the major passenger gateway to Hong Kong, will start soon.The project, which is estimated to cost 500 million yuan (about 60.24 million U.S. dollars), will concentrate on improving transportation conditions around the checkpoints. The railway station near the checkpoints will also be renovated. A special 30-meter-wide corridor will be erected to link the railway station and the checkpoints and to accommodate passengers who choose to travel by train to Hong Kong or to the Chinese mainland via the checkpoint, said local sources. The upgrading project will take three years. On completion, the number of clearance exits will be increased from the present 54 to 78, but entry clearance windows will be cut from 83 to 78. The number of exit and entry passengers handled at Shenzhen City, which faces Hong Kong across a local river, has been increasing at a speed of 15 percent annually since Shenzhen became a special economic zone (SEZ) 21 years ago. Luohu Checkpoints handled more than 85.73 million exit and entry passengers last year, with the daily flow of passengers averaging 235,000, higher than the designed daily handling capacity of 200,000 passengers. |
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