THE city will initiate the long-anticipated renovation of National Highway 107 simultaneously with the construction of two Metro lines, Line 20 and Line 26, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.

This will avoid waste of government investment and repeated work on Highway 107, according to a reply of the Shenzhen Municipal Transport Bureau to deputies to the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Congress.

The bureau has completed renovation plans for the highway and it is working with related departments to work on the project as soon as possible.

The two Metro lines, Phase II of Line 20 and Line 26, have not been included into the city’s Phase IV planning of the Metro network between 2017 and 2022.

According to the plan, Phase II of Line 20 extends south from Airport North Station to Futian along National Highway 107. Phase I of Line 20, which is now under construction, runs 8.36 kilometers from T4 of Shenzhen International Airport to Shenzhen World Exhibition and Convention Center. It has five stations including an exchange station with Line 11 and Guangzhou-Dongguan-Shenzhen Intercity Rail. Line 26 runs from Shenzhen airport to Songgang in Bao’an District.

In 2015, the city set its sights on revamping the 31-kilometer, 12-lane National Highway 107, which cuts off the city’s western waterfront development areas from its mountain ranges to the east. Deputies at the annual session of city’s legislature in 2019 hoped to speed up renovation of Highway 107 to reshape the traffic estuary of Bao’an District and release more land for development.

The renovation projects include building underground tunnels in Bao’an CBD, Tiezaishan and Shajing central area to separate vehicle types.

A total of 20 interchange flyovers will be built or renovated and 21 traffic control intersections will be added. The facilities will break the physical segregation by the highway.

A slow traffic system will be in place for pedestrians and bicyclists. The plan is to build a three-dimensional slow traffic system underground, on the ground and along Highway 107 that starts from Nantou Checkpoint in the south and ends at Songgang in the north.

A gateway to the city’s west, the north-south Highway 107 is often congested with heavy vehicles due to a lack of interchanges with east-west roads. The highway also cuts off urban development and blocks the industrial development along the sides of the highway.  (Han Ximin)