HONG KONG/SHENZHEN, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The redeveloped Huanggang Port opened at 6:30 a.m. local time on Monday, streamlining cross-border passenger travel between China's Shenzhen and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The redeveloped port is positioned as the most important 24-hour passenger land boundary control point between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. It operates under a co-location arrangement with a new "collaborative inspection and joint clearance" mode, allowing travelers to complete both Hong Kong and Shenzhen immigration clearance in a single queue.
Under this new clearance mode, clearance time will be significantly reduced from around 30 minutes at the original Lok Ma Chau/Huanggang Port to approximately five minutes.
The design flow of the redeveloped port is 200,000 passenger trips per day, and could be further increased to about 300,000 upon the future commissioning of the Northern Link Spur Line of Hong Kong's MTR Corporation Limited.
The port has 134 "collaborative inspection" automated channels and 68 traditional manual counters set up side by side. In addition to the automated channels, travelers can also clear customs using the manual counters.
"It is very convenient and extremely fast," Ms. Wong, a traveler heading from Hong Kong to Shenzhen via Huanggang Port, said, adding that crossing the border previously required taking a shuttle bus, which was very time-consuming, but the new co-location arrangement has significantly improved efficiency.
"Officers from both sides work in the same area, allowing travelers to complete clearance procedures for both Hong Kong and Shenzhen in one go, which is highly efficient," Mr. Chen, a tourist visiting Hong Kong from Shenzhen, said.
The original Huanggang Port, which opened in 1989, was China's first large-scale land port with 24-hour clearance. It has served hundreds of millions of travelers, with daily passenger traffic peaking at over 60,000 and daily vehicle traffic reaching around 10,000.
Reconstruction on the original site began in 2019 to meet the surging demand for cross-border passage. ■
