HONG KONG is planning to widen Lo Wu Road, closest to the SAR side of the Luohu Checkpoint, for the benefit of thousands of schoolchildren who live in Shenzhen and attend school in Hong Kong.

The one-way road has no pedestrian walkway and is too narrow to accommodate the increasing number of cross-border vehicles and passengers, Wong Wang-to, a legislator of Hong Kong North District Board, told the Southern Metropolis Daily on Tuesday.

“In most cases, people have to fight for space with cars,” Wong said. “It would be not easy for ambulances to get there in case of accidents.”

The road will become a two-way one with a 1.6-meter-wide pedestrian walkway, the Highways Department of the SAR said. Construction will begin in August and be completed by June 2010.

More than 3,500 schoolchildren travel from Shenzhen to Hong Kong through the Luohu Checkpoint each day, making up 60 percent of the total number of cross-border students in the SAR, according to statistics released by the Hong Kong government.

The Lo Wu Road is jammed with school buses and cars waiting to pick up children during school hours daily, the Daily said.

During rush hour, more than 130 vehicles use the road at any point of time. It was designed to accommodate a maximum of 100.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government intends to arrange for cross-border school buses to use Huanggang Checkpoint in an effort to reduce congestion at Luohu.

(Vivian Li)