A new metro project linking Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, to
Foshan and Nanhai will officially begin before the end of the year.
The 22-kilometre subway, slated to be in operation in 2005, will be the first to connect three cities in the country.
Huang Weihong, director-general of the Guangdong Provincial Development Planning Commission, recently revealed that feasibility studies for the project had been completed.
Addressing a work conference, Huang said the Guangdong provincial capital, along with
Foshan and Nanhai, two prosperous cities in the Pearl River Delta, will share equally in the construction fund of more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion).
The subway line will begin at the Fangchun District of Guangzhou, via Nanhai, and end in Foshan.
It will connect with the current
GuangZhou Metro Line One, and a subway station will be located every two kilometres.
The project is expected to help further improve economic ties among the cities in the Pearl River Delta that border the
Hong Kong and
Macao Special Administrative regions.
The Guangzhou-Nanhai-Foshan metro project is just one part of Guangdong's subway network that will be constructed during the 10th Five-Year-Plan period (2001-05).
Huang said that the government is planning to build a metro network that consists of more than 900 kilometers of subway track to link major cities in the Pearl River Delta and further improve the province's environment.
More than 90 billion yuan (US$10.84 billion) will be needed for its construction.
The huge construction funds needed for the subway network in Guangdong will be raised mainly from the market, Huang said.
Various government officials and departments are also negotiating with their counterparts in
Hong Kong and
Macao to connect Guangdong's metro network with the transportation systems in the two special administrative regions.
In Guangzhou, which already has one subway line in operation, several others are under construction or being planned.
The city's Metro Line 2, which started construction in 1999, will be in operation next year.
Construction of the 23.27-kilometre Metro Line 2 consists of 16 stops and will cost a total of 10.67 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion).
And construction on the Metro Line 3 began late last year.
The 32.4-kilometre Metro Line 3, which has 23 stations, will run from the city's Tianhe Railway Station and cross the Pearl River, ending at Guangzhou's Panyu District located at the mouth of the Pearl River.
The Metro Line 3 that is expected to be in operation before 2005, and will benefit more than 100,000 residents living along the line.
Another metro project is also well under way in the
Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.
The 18-station subway line, which began construction last year, will ultimately cost 10.6 billion yuan (US$1.28 billion) and is expected to be completed in four years.
