BEIJING - China's road passenger and freight transport extended growth in the first 10 months of 2011, a transportation official has said.

From January to October, the country's road transportation served 27.2 billion passengers, up 7.7 percent from a year earlier, while overall ship passengers climbed 8.4 percent to 200 million, said He Jianzhong, spokesman for the Ministry of Transport (MOT) Friday.

The amount of cargo carried on roads increased 15 percent to 23.07 billion tons, while that transported by water grew 15.3 percent to 3.5 billion tons, he said.

Meanwhile, freight volume at China's ports witnessed strong growth, with domestic trade cargo throughput outperforming that of foreign trade, according to the spokesman.

Investment in transport infrastructure also expanded over the period. Fixed-asset investments in the sector gained 11.5 percent year-on-year to 1.1397 trillion yuan ($178.77 billion), the spokesman said.

To break down the statistics, investment in road construction amounted to 1.00695 trillion yuan, up 9.9 percent from a year earlier. River projects totalled 29.06 billion yuan, up 28.6 percent, while coastal infrastructure investment surged 32.4 percent to 81.295 billion yuan.