Hunan's transport takes off

Construction on the province's road, river, rail, air networks gets off to a flying start, Fu Chao and Feng Zhiwei report.

Hunan has stepped up efforts to develop its transport network and logistics industry, said a senior official in the Central China province.

According to Zhang Jianfei, deputy governor of Hunan, the province will put larger emphasis on integrating infrastructure to build a transport hub in the region.

Water transport

Hunan has several navigable rivers and has developed an inland water transportation system.

Major ports along the Yangtze and its tributaries handled 171,000 containers in the first half of 2014, marking a nearly 30 percent increase year-on-year. There are 63 ports in the province and the total length for all the navigable water channels reached 11,969 kilometers.

An inland water transport system has been formed with the Yangtze River and neighboring Dongting Lake as the center and Changsha Port and Yueyang Port as its main hubs.

Chenglingji Port in Yueyang city is now a new growth engine in the industry, according to the local government.

Qian Yehua, chairman of Broad Homes Industrial Co Ltd, a manufacturer of prefabricated buildings, said the company opened a new production plant in the new industrial area around the port.

Part of the company's business is to transport residential building components to the rest of the world. According to Qian, using water transport saves the company 60 percent of the cost compared to land transport and allows more products to be exported.

From November 2013, its products started being exported from Chenglingji Port to the Republic of Suriname, on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America.

Broad Homes plans to develop and export components for 18,000 prefabricated homes during the coming two to three years to Suriname to help address population migration issues and housing shortages.

Qian said that the port's advantages would help the company tap into more new markets abroad. Broad Homes has now signed deals with Russia, Brazil and Australia.

The provincial government is working on a range of water transport projects, including an advanced and extensive waterway network covering Dongting Lake and Xiangjiang and Yuanjiang rivers.

Road transport

People living in Guangming village in Wangcheng district of Changsha city couldn't imagine the difference a new road would bring to their hometown.

Located in the southwestern part of the district, the village used to be fairly backward due to its poorly developed transport system.

Several years ago, the local government built roads connecting different parts of the village and surrounding areas.

As well as the roads, the village's tourist resources were also developed. During the past two years, the village attracted eight investment projects and the local government is working on transforming the village into a tourist resort.

Six highways were completed in Hunan last year to create an extensive highway network that makes it possible to reach the provincial capital Changsha in four hours from major parts of the province.

Civil aviation

The first intercontinental flight from Changsha Huanghua International Airport took off with about 200 passengers bound for Frankfurt, Germany, on June 24, 2014. There are three flights every week for the route, which marked the start of a connection between Central China and Germany.

Passengers leaving from Changsha used to have transfer in Shanghai, Guangzhou or Beijing, but the direct route shortens the journey by three to eight hours.

Liu Zhiren, general manager of Hunan Airport Management Group, said the intercontinental route will boost tourism and economic cooperation between Central China, especially Hunan, and Europe.

According to the group, by the end of November last year, 30,000 passengers flew the route to Germany and 30 percent of them were business travelers. About 13 percent of the passengers were foreign tourists, with the proportion growing.

In December 2014, Hunan opened the second intercontinental route, Changsha to Los Angeles. It was also the province's first direct route to the United States.

The flight takes about 17 hours. Passengers stop at Anchorage, in Alaska, for two hours before continuing the journey to LA.

High-speed railways

Li Yanchun, a resident in western Hunan's Huaihua city, now works in Changsha. The distance between the two cities is more than 400 km. She used to endure six-hour train or bus journeys to get home and each year could only afford to visit once or twice.

The Hunan section of the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway, which connects Changsha and Huaihua, started operating in December 2014. The route means Li can now get home in less than two hours.

Li said she now leaves Changsha in the morning and arrives home before lunch. If necessary, she can even get back to Changsha in the evening of the same day. "It's like I'm still staying with my family in the same city," she said.

Last year, more cities in the province, including Loudi, Shaoyang and Huaihua, were included in the high-speed railway network, which covered about 71 percent of the cities in Hunan.

At the intersection of the Beijing-Guangzhou and Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railways, Changsha now has direct high-speed train services to 12 provincial capitals in the country.

Construction of the maglev railway connecting Changsha South Railway Station with Huanghua International Airport started in May last year and it is due to be completed by the end of this year. When operational, it will take 10 minutes to commute between the railway station and the airport.

Construction of the high-speed railway linking Huaihua, Shaoyang and Hengyang started in June last year and is expected to finish by 2018.

Work on Qianjiang-Zhangjiajie-Changde high-speed railway also began last year and is expected to finish in about five years. When complete, it will take three hours to get from Chongqing to Changsha, a saving of at least seven hours.

Contact the writers at fengzhiwei@chinadaily.com

(China Daily 04/08/2015 page15)