[270212.EN.LOG] West China To Be Linked With New Expressways And Railway Lines To Seaports

BEIJING has decided to build expressways and railways connecting to coastal ports through southwest Guizhou province, reports Xinhua.

The province, bordered by Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guangxi and Hunan, is a gateway to both the Pearl and Yangtze rivers. But as its traffic capacity is still very restricted, southwest China's development suffers from a transport bottleneck of inadequate infrastructure.

The central government will support the building of an expressway network in coming few years from Sichuan to Guizhou and another from Yinchuan in northwest Ningxia to Longbang in southern Guangxi. This will be the second route from the southwest China coming after the first one from Chongqing to Zhanjiang in Guangdong that opened in 2005.

Construction of the main phase of the Yinchuan to Longbang expressway within the Guizhou provincial territory started last year. It will link Chongqing to the Guizhou expressway to the north, and to the south link Baotou in Inner Mongolia to the Maoming Guangdong expressway at Lanzhou Gansu to the Haikou Hainan expressway, and to the Longbang checkpoint bordering Vietnam via the Yinchuan to Longbang expressway.

Besides building expressways, the government will also start to build railways from Guizhou to Sichuan and Chongqing as soon as possible with the goal of increasing the provincial railway trackage to 5,000 kilometres by 2015, while the expressways will reach 4,500 kilometres by then.

Moreover, Xinjiang in northwest China will be connected to seaports in the Beibu Gulf and in the Pearl River Delta via railways under construction such as on from Lanzhou to Urumchi, and from Lanzhou to Chongqing and from Guizhou to Guangzhou.

China will advance port construction in Chongqing on Yangtze and other western inland river ports with an aim to improve the cargo handling capacity to more than 300 million tonnes and set up a large shipping network transporting iron ore, coal, crude oil and container cargo, said Transport Minister Li Shenglin.

Source : HKSG, 27.02.12.