THE New Guangzhou Railway Station will be put into use during the Chinese Lunar New Year of 2008.

The new railway station, four times larger than the existing Guangzhou Railway Station, is expected to fulfill the needs for more than 78 million passengers a year, according to Wu Junguang, head of the Guangzhou Railway Group, who is attending the ongoing session of the National People's Congress in Beijing. According to Wu, the station will have 15 platforms and 28 rail lines.

The total investment will be 13 billion yuan (US$158.5 million).

"The total building area will be 377,600 square meters. The passenger waiting area will be 179,300 square meters, while the covered platforms will cover 198,500 square meters," Wu said.

According to Wu, the station's maximum capacity in the foreseeable future will reach 116 million passengers each year.

The architecture of the new station will be traditional Guangdong style. It will have sufficient signs to make crowd control and evacuation easier.

The plan Wu made public was one of nine plans submitted by 16 companies from China and abroad. A French company and a German one took part in the bidding.

According to the plan, the new station will make traveling in Guangzhou and to neighboring cities convenient. It will be linked to several main roads and three metro lines, including Line 2, 7 and 12.

With the completion of the New Guangzhou Railway Station, the city of Guangzhou will have three railway stations. The other two are the existing Guangzhou Railway Station and Guangzhou East Station.

Statistics show that Guangdong's total length of railway track is only 2.5 percent of that in China. The province's railway network becomes over-strained during major holidays.

So far, Guangdong has only 1,882 kilometers of railway track. According to the province's development plan, it will be extended to 29,000 kilometers by 2020.

Editor: Wing