北京動工建新国際機場:２０１９年開業

A few weeks ago the NHK News on-line reported the following:

北京の新国際空港 ２０１９年開業向け着工

12月27日 1時38分

中国の首都北京に、世界有数の規模となる新たな国際空港が建設されることになり、２０１９年の開業に向けて、２６日、着工しました。

中国政府は北京にある今の北京首都国際空港だけでは利用者の増加に対応できないとして、今月、新たな国際空港の建設計画を承認し、２６日、中心部から南におよそ５０キロ離れた建設地で工事が始まりました。
計画では、総工費８００億人民元（日本円にしておよそ１兆５５００億円）をかけて、７０万平方メートルのターミナルビルや４本の滑走路などを建設し、２０１９年に開業する予定です。
新たな空港は国際的なハブ空港として、将来的には、年間１億人の利用者の需要に応えられるとしており、国営の中国中央テレビは、年間の利用者がおよそ８４００万人と、世界第２位の利用者数の北京首都国際空港を上回る規模になる可能性があると伝えています。また、新たな空港は、北京と隣接する河北省にまたがって建設されるほか、天津の市街地からもおよそ８０キロとアクセスしやすい場所にあり、今後、空港と周辺の主要都市との間は高速道路や鉄道でつながる見通しです。
中国政府は、国家戦略として北京、河北省、天津を首都圏として今後一体的に発展させる政策を打ち出しており、新空港を地域の経済発展のけん引役としたい考えです。

(試譯文)

A new international airport in the metropolitan Beijing of China which would be of eminent scale in the world had started construction on the 26^th (December); it would begin operation in 2019.

The Chinese government assumed that merely the Beijing metropolitan international airport now in Beijing could not cope with the user increase and a construction project for a new international airport was approved this month (December). On the 26th work had started at the construction site which was approximately 50 kilometers to the south of the center.

In the planning the total construction cost was 80,000 million Chinese dollars (converted into approximately 1,550,000 million Japanese yen), building 700,000 square meters of terminal buildings and four runways. It would start business in 2019.

It was assumed that in future, as an international hub airport the new airport needed to cope with user demand of 100 million people a year. The state-operated Chinese central television was saying that there was a possibility that annual users would be in the region of approximately 84 million people, which exceeded the number of users at the Beijing metropolitan international airport which was at the 2nd place in the world. Also, the new airport would connect with other ones that were under construction in Hopei province which was neighboring Beijing. The city of Tianjin which was approximately 80 kilometers away would also become an easily accessible location. From now on there was a perspective that this airport would be connected to the surrounding metropolis by freeways and railroads.

To the Chinese government as a state strategy from now on it would work out a policy to develop Beijing, Hopei province and Tianjin as a whole into a metropolitan area. There was the idea to make the new airport into a driving force of economic development in the region.

It is a huge project. The region will have a new face by the end of this decade.