Construction of Beijing's new Fengtai Railway Station started in the first half of this year, and the station, reputed to be one of the largest in Asia, is expected to open at the end of 2020, local officials said on Tuesday.

The new Fengtai Railway Station, which is aiming to handle 14,000 passengers simultaneously when in operation, is designed to have 12 platforms and 22 rail lines, according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform.

Some main high-speed rail routes, including lines from the capital to Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong, will pass through the new railway station.

The project plans to ease pressure on Beijing West Railway Station, which reached its capacity of 180,000 passengers a day in 2016, according to the Beijing Railway Bureau.

It is expected that some railways in the station will open at the end of 2020 and the station will fully complete construction at the end of 2021, said Li Xiaotao, director of the investment department of the commission.

Once completed, the Fengtai station buildings will cover 400,000 square meters, 78,000 square meters larger than Beijing South Railway Station, currently one of Asia's largest.

Beijing South served about 20,000 passengers per day in its first days of operation, but it reached its maximum capacity of 210,000 passengers during the May Day holiday in 2018, according to station authorities.

The supporting housing of the new Fengtai station will also reach 357,000 square meters, Li said.

"A set of high-standard surrounding facilities will be built for the new railway station to increase the overall passenger capacity," he said, adding that the supporting services for the round-trip railway line, a carriage maintenance station as well as a bullet train repair site will start construction soon.

Trains on the Beijing-Guangzhou line and Beijing-Shanghai rail line, two major routes through the capital's Fengtai district, had been diverted to create space for construction, said Li.

The new station will also make it more convenient for passengers in southern Beijing to take trains directly from Fengtai to Shijiazhuang, Zhengzhou and Wuhan.

The Fengtai station is being relocated 1.4 kilometers northeast of its original location to an area between the west Third Ring and Fourth Ring roads in Beijing.

With four floors above ground and three underground, the Fengtai station will be a two-layer structure combining conventional train and bullet train routes, the construction company said.

Built in 1895, the old Fengtai station was the oldest in the capital. In June 2010, the station ceased passenger services, with trains just passing through.