The opening of Kunming's new international airport is just around the corner, but in a few years it will likely face stiff competition on the ground for domestic and international passengers.

Construction on Kunming's new south railway station began on June 16 and will take four years to complete, according to a report on the city's English-language portal InKunming.

The new railway station, which will be located 28 kilometers south of Kunming's current south station in Chenggong, will be integrated with Kunming's upcoming urban light rail network, connecting to lines 1 and 4.

Primary destinations served by trains setting out from the new station include Shanghai, neighboring Guangxi, Chongqing and the nearby city of Yuxi.

The Shanghai line, which is scheduled to be completed by 2015, will be a high-speed line that will reduce travel time between the two cities from the current 37 hours to less than nine hours.

The Kunming-Shanghai high-speed line will also link Kunming with other major cities including Guiyang, Nanchang, Changsha and Hangzhou and will likely compete with the city's new international airport for passengers to these cities.

Details are still unclear, but it appears that the lines to Chongqing, Guangxi and Yuxi will also be high-speed lines. The link with Yuxi will be part of a trans-Asian rail network that will run south through Laos, Thailand and Malaysia before terminating in Singapore.

Located at the bottom of Longtan Mountain (龙潭山), Kunming's new south railway station will feature 30 rail lines and 16 passenger platforms and is expected to have a capacity of 128,000 passengers daily with a maximum passenger volume of 12,000 people per hour.

The projected cost for the new station has not been made public.

Images: InKunming

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