THE plan for a Shenzhen-Zhuhai Link has made significant progress as the bidding results for a road project that will link Qianhai with the Shenzhen-Zhuhai Link were published recently, a source from the Qianhai authority said.

In the future, it will take 30 minutes from Xili Station to Zhuhai by high-speed rail, compared with two to three hours’ driving time currently.

The Shenzhen-Zhuhai Link will be built according to the standards of a high-speed railway, with a design top speed of 350 kilometers per hour. It will connect with the Shenshan High-speed Railway in the east at Xili Station and be part of the Shenzhen-Nanning, Shenzhen-Zhaoqing and Shenzhen-Zhanjiang railways. The link will have a stop at Qianhai and is designed to go under the Pearl River.

The landing point in Shenzhen will be connected with the Outer Ring Road, which links Qianhai, Baopeng Passage, Nanping Expressway and Yueliangwan Boulevard.

The Shenzhen-Zhuhai Link is expected to feature both rail and road services, according to the construction plan. However, the plan will be adjusted based on actual conditions.

The preliminary design of the link has a bridge in the east and a tunnel in the west that will meet at the Pearl River. But the city’s transport bureau has said that the scale of the work required for the tunnel project, which incorporates both high-speed rail and automotive traffic, is unprecedented and presents many technical challenges. It has suggested building separate tunnels for the general traffic and the high-speed rail.

As to the construction of the bridge section, the bureau said that further study is needed to determine whether the infrastructure should combine both the railway and roadway.  

(Han Ximin)