China Announces Construction of World’s Largest and Deepest HSR Station

Chinese media were told on 29 September 2016 that the world’s largest and deepest High Speed Railway station will be constructed underneath the most visited section of the Great Wall, in time for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The new station will be located at Badaling, 80 km from Beijing, along the 174 km railway network that will link China’s capital with Zhangjiakou, Hebei province. The 10 station railway is currently under construction and is planned to be finished by the end of 2019; it will have two branch lines connecting also Yanqing and Chongli.

According to He Yi, Head of the Major Project Construction Department at the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Development, the railway (with a designed maximum speed of 350 kph) will shorten travel time between Beijing North Station and the Olympics venues in Zhangjiakou from the current 3.5 hours to around 50 minutes.

Chen Bin, China Railway No 5 Engineering Group Construction Director, told reporters that "the Badaling station will be located 102 meters below the surface, with an underground construction area of 36,000 square meters, equal to five standard soccer fields, making it the deepest and largest high speed railway station in the world."

The underground station will have three floors, with separate levels for arriving and departing passengers.

Advanced explosion technologies will be employed during station excavations to ensure that the UNESCO World Heritage Site is not affected.