New Beijing Airport Construction Well Under Way
With its steel foundations recently completed, construction on the new Beijing airport continues to roll forward with the finalization of a light transit line that will ferry commuters back-and-forth to the city center in just 30 minutes.
Recently submitted for environmental assessment, the transport link will connect Beijing West Railway Station with the new airport. The most recent draft alters the southern route of the railway's Hebei portion but makes no changes to the route between Beijing and the new airport.
As seen in the map (shown above), the express train to the new airport does not depart from Beijing South Railway Station, even though the latter also connects with Huangcun Station on Beijing Metro Line 4. Not yet announced is whether or not Line 4 will be extended to the new airport.
Also noteworthy is that current plans for the light transit line do not connect it with Tianjin, but instead terminate to its west in Bazhou.
Set to become the "world's largest", the new airport recently completed work on its steel understructure that will cover an area of 313,000 square meters (3.4 million square feet). The Zaha Hadid-designed complex sports a six "pronged" design as well as elements of Chinese culture, and most practical of all for air passengers, promises distances of no more than 600 meters from the extremity of each wing to the central building that lies at its hub.
READ: 10 Things That Would Make Beijing's New Airport Not Just World's Largest, But World's Best
The new airport will exclusively host China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines, which will build a 13.2 billion yuan (USD 1.9 billion) facility from which to operate.
Unofficially named "Beijing Daxing International Airport," the four runways are expected to handle 620,000 flights a year by 2025, processing 72 million passengers and 2 million tons of cargo.
Here's how the new airport currently looks when compared to its final design:
And here's how the interior of the new airport looks, both present and future:
Images: ArchDaily.com, Weibo.com
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