China builds high tech airport
Mpho Mokwape | Friday October 20, 2017 15:06
The airport, which is taking shape as construction is up and running, has been positioned as the largest international airport hub projected to receive a total of 100 million passengers annually as a long term plan, 620,000 aircraft movements, cargo and mail throughput of four million tons.
Accordingly the project, which is a landmark project of Beijing and a new power house of national development, it is a high design technological project that is being built to ensure safety from earthquakes and also has green site to fight pollution.
This week, as part of China’s Communist Party mandate, journalists from across the world toured the new airport construction site where the structural housing is already above the ground, runways and the shape of the terminal have vividly emerged.
When taking journalists through the project, site spokesperson, Zhu Wenxin said the strictest construction was being carried out to ensure high standard and quality, which was preached by President Xi Jinping when inspecting it.
“This is a high quality project and our President has strict instructions that the project must be built into a model project with high quality and that it be clean and safe. We are also on the right course because the most advanced management technologies and experience are integrated,” he said.
According to the spokesperson the airport, which is 67km from the capital’s airport, 46km from the famous Tian’anmen Square and situated in the Hebei Province, once complete will have six runways of which four will be built in the omni-directional structure, with three going vertical and one horizontal, of which they explain it is the first of its kind in China. Zhu explained that the runways are designed in that manner to offer multiple feasible solutions for air traffic control as it can utilise the limited airspace, reduce the taxing time of aircraft, noises and improve efficiency of integrated air ground operation. On the terminal design, Zhu said the traditional Chinese architecture elements and world leading design concepts of the terminal were on course with the five concourses, while the central radiation design of the main terminal had been confirmed according to the needs of such as aircraft parking and technological process.
He explained that the feature of the structure was that the concourses were short, the airside large and that it can contain more related parking stands at the same time, shorten the longest walking distance from the centre of the terminal to the boarding bridge, which is reported to be the most efficient when compared to other similar airports in the world.
The airport also has two levels of departure floors, an initial global practice meant to meet the needs of the curb sides covering roughly 72m passenger throughput.
For the integrated transportation, the project is expected to carry a massive volume of public transportation and leading the way in the high tech as they are striving to build a five vertical and two horizontal integrated transportation networks to achieve the organic integration of highways, intercity railway and the city railway. “This will allow the structuring of the radiation circles of highways and railways with the new airport as the centre, forming the integrated transportation system with high radiating capacity around the area especially down the terminal where several railway lines crosses from north to south,” Wenxin said.
The idea from the spokesperson is that the design speed of high speed railway crossing under the terminal can reach a 250 km per hour of which the crossing mode and the design speed are the initial practices amongst the world airports.
Accordingly, passengers are also promised seamless connection of the airside and the land transportation as the railway station is set up at the second underground floor terminal where passengers can directly enter the terminal through massive volume elevators or auto escalators making the new airport a real integrated transportation hub.