FOUR intercity public bus routes will be opened before the Chinese New Year in February for commuters traveling between Shenzhen and two neighboring Pearl River Delta cities, a senior city transport commission official said Tuesday.

Two routes will connect Shenzhen and Dongguan, while the other two will link Huizhou, according to a proposal being finalized by the public transport division of the Shenzhen Transport Commission and their counterparts in the two neighboring cities.

"The new bus services will be different from the existing services which provide only point-to-point transport between Shenzhen and the two cities," said Gao Xumin, chief of the public transport division.

The new bus services will be operated like other public bus routes with multiple stops allowing access to passengers along the way. The new buses will be painted green to differentiate them from other inner city public buses.

"The services will complement to the existing public bus network in the three cities," Gao said.

Meanwhile, the restructuring of Shenzhen's public bus system will be completed by the end of January 2010, Gao said in a briefing to legislators in an inspection of the public transport network Tuesday.

The restructuring involves 38 bus operators running 269 bus routes employing 35,000 people. On completion, the bus routes will be operated by three main bus companies in a three-tier network, containing community, intradistrict and express buses.