Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng has announced that the central government has decided to allow the Macau government to lease a plot of land from Zhuhai so that Macau’s future Light Rail Transit (LRT) East Line can be extended to the Qingmao checkpoint.
Ho made the announcement during Saturday’s press conference at Government Headquarters about his video conference with Vice Premier Han Zheng on Friday afternoon.
Xinhua reported on Friday night that during his meeting with Ho by video link from Beijing, Han voiced the central government’s full support for Macau in speeding up its infrastructure construction and appropriately diversifying its economy.
During Saturday’s press conference, Ho pointed out that he and Han discussed a range of matters concerning Macau’s infrastructure development during Friday’s video conference.
In addition to Macau’s LRT East Line project, according to Ho, during Friday’s video conference both sides also discussed Macau’s plans to extend its airport runway and apron and to dredge its coastal waters so that more planes and larger ships could be accommodated.
The Macau government is planning to build a sea-crossing LRT section connecting the Barrier Gate land border checkpoint and the Taipa Ferry Terminal in Pac On via the Zone A and Zone E1 land reclamation areas. The section is officially known as East Line.
According to a plan announced by the Macau government in 2020, the LRT East Line station serving the Barrier Gate checkpoint would be built on a location from where it would take pedestrians just two minutes to walk to the checkpoint.
During Saturday’s press conference, Ho noted that due to the fact that a plot of land located next to the Barrier Gate checkpoint is owned by Zhuhai, a station of the LRT East Line could only be built on a location at the peninsula’s northern coast which would be quite a distance from the Barrier Gate checkpoint, adding that the LRT East Line also could not be connected to the nearby Qingmao checkpoint in Ilha Verde by travelling under the Barrier Gate checkpoint.
Ho said that after Friday’s video conference, the central government had decided to allow the Macau government to lease the plot, which covers 3,000 to 4,000 square metres, from Zhuhai so that the LRT East Line can be extended to the Qingmao checkpoint. In which case, according to Ho, the station serving the Barrier Gate checkpoint can also be built just next to the bus terminal at the checkpoint.
Without extension to the Qingmao checkpoint, the East Line was initially planned to be 7.65 kilometres long.
After the central government’s green light for the Macau government to lease the plot from Zhuhai, Ho noted that the Macau government will revise the design of the LRT East Line. He also added that the government planned to invite bids for the LRT East Line project in November at the earliest.
The plot would be Macau’s third leasehold from the mainland, after the about one-square-kilometre campus of the public University of Macau (UM) on Zhuhai’s Hengqin Island, and the Macau-side checkpoint zone of the joint Macau-Zhuhai border checkpoint in Hengqin.
This artist’s rendition shows the government’s original plan, which was announced in 2020, about a Light Rail Transit (LRT) East Line station serving the Barrier Gate checkpoint.
