Hong Kong’s rail terminus goes ahead

With a total area of over 380,000 square meters, the multi-storey West Kowloon rail terminus, the majority of it located underground, will be larger than most airport terminals, and capable of handling around 99,000 passengers per day. The first trains are expected to run from 2015. The Hong Kong section of the express rail link, operating at up to 200 km per hour, will connect Hong Kong with the capital Beijing over 2,000 kilometers away, passing via Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Wuhan.
October 5, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
With a total area of over 380,000 square meters, the multi-storey West Kowloon rail terminus, the majority of it located underground, will be larger than most airport terminals, and capable of handling around 99,000 passengers per day.

The first trains are expected to run from 2015. The Hong Kong section of the express rail link, operating at up to 200 km per hour, will connect Hong Kong with the capital Beijing over 2,000 kilometers away, passing via Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Wuhan.

A safety glass and steel roof structure spans the building and provides daylight to the terminus with its duty-free shops, restaurants and waiting lounges; the design was a winner in the 2010 World Architecture Festival and also won a 2012 MIPIM Award.

Eighty-one escalators and moving walks will transport travellers and visitors throughout the new terminus and to the station's fifteen platforms. An eco-friendly energy saving system reduces the speed whenever there are no passengers. Depending on passenger volumes this can create energy savings of up to 60%.

Related Content

  • Virtual traffic management centres, a new direction in traffic monitoring
    January 30, 2012
    David Crawford picks up a new direction trend in traffic monitoring The surprise winner in the Traffic Management Centre (TMC) category of the recently-announced 2011 OSMOSE (Open Source for MObile and SustainablE city) Awards for European innovations in urban transport, is the Danish city of Aalborg - which doesn't have a TMC. Alternatively, one might consider its 'virtual' TMC as a signpost for the future in medium-sized cities.
    Read More
  • Mounting benefits of dynamic tolling project
    January 30, 2012
    Wisconsin's four-year HOT lanes pilot project, launched in May 2008, cost US$18.8 million to construct. Halfway into the project, which uses variably priced, or dynamic, tolling to improve highway efficiency, the benefits are mounting. The problem was obvious, and frustrating, to anyone who ever sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on State Route 167 and watched a lone car whiz by every 20 seconds or so in the carpool lane. But for planners at the Washington State Department of Transportation, the conundrum was
    Read More
  • New approach to real time travel information - free of charge
    February 3, 2012
    Austria's national road operator, ASFINAG, has launched the TMCplus traveller information service which is unusual in that it offers encrypted-level services to all users free of charge. Martin Müllner writes
    Read More
  • Genetec unifies security for Quebec City airport
    June 15, 2016
    Genetec is at San Jose, highlighting a deployment with Quebec City Jean- Lesage International Airport. The airport deployed Genetec Security Center in 2008 as part of a major expansion to accommodate an increase in regional and international flights. Today, Security Center helps the airport's operators manage more 230 Axis and Panasonic cameras, 60 perimeter gates and hundreds of doors with HID Global card credentials, biometric iris-scans and fingerprint technologies. They also must track more than 2,000 c
    Read More

Highlighted Content