Transportation has played a key role in driving Guizhou's economic development and will continue to do so and remain a big focus for the local government, officials said.
The province in Southwest China has built what it calls a three-dimensional traffic network, comprising of highways, expressways, high-speed rail, waterways and aviation.
Total investment in Guizhou's highways from 1949 to 2018 stands at 1.12 trillion yuan ($157.4 billion). Making up large parts of the total investment were more than 100 million yuan in 1988, over 1 billion yuan in 1996 and more than 100 billion yuan in 2014.
Because of such large-scale investment the province's GDP in 2018 was 1.8 trillion yuan, rising at an average rate of 11 percent over the past six years.
Since the first Five-Year Plan in 1953, the region has rebuilt two important highways connecting it to two of its neighbors, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Yunnan. Guizhou has also made concerted efforts to build roads leading to remote areas.
After the reform and opening-up policy was adopted in 1978, highway construction in the province surged, and by the end of 2018 the road network stretched 197,000 kilometers.
Construction on high-quality and high-capacity roads in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province, and Huangguoshu, a tourist destination known for its waterfalls, in 1986, opened up a new chapter for the province's road network. In 2001, the province's first expressway, from Kaili to Majiang, opened to traffic.
Guizhou took the lead in making sure each county had access to expressways among its western regions in 2015. By the end of 2018, expressways alone stretched 6,453 km and superhighways extended 2,082 km. The province launched a three-year project building pitch and cement roads in rural areas in 2017. The mileage reached 27,980 km that year and 77,482 km in 2018, enabling 39,900 villages with more than 30 households each to have access to such roads. As of June, the roads reached 78,688 km.
Guizhou's waterways and canals have also been lengthened, with 2,802 km in use in 1978 rising to 3,780 km by the end of 2018.
Three major water channels into the province have also been renovated in that time, including the Wujiang River channel which reopened to traffic in January 2017 after being closed for 13 years.
High-level waterways in the province - those that cater to a large capacity of traffic - flow for more than 900 km.
As of June, Guizhou's water conservancy projects were capable of supplying 12.29 billion cubic meters of water annually.
China's high-speed railway has acted as its backbone for economic rise, many say. Guizhou entered the high-speed railway era in 2014 and has become an important crossroad for high-speed transport in western China, local officials said.
The Guiyang-Nanning High-speed Railway, expected to be completed in late 2023, will extend 482 km and have a top speed of 350 km/h. It will start from Guian and travel through Longli, Guiding, Duyun, Dushan and Libo in Guizhou, before arriving in Nanning, capital of neighboring Guangxi.
After it opens to traffic, Guiyang will become a central hub in western China reaching south to the Beibu Gulf region. It will be much easier for visitors to travel to Libo in Qiannan Bouyei and Miao autonomous prefecture, taking them only one hour from Guiyang to Libo, authorities in Guizhou said.
All nine cities and prefectures in the province have airports open to traffic and had a combined passenger throughput exceeding 27.99 million in 2018.
As planned, Guizhou will have connected all its counties to airports by the end of 2025. By that time, it will have formed a comprehensive airport network covering popular scenic areas, key agricultural production areas and important forests and reserves.
Guizhou's diverse geography has meant that bridges and tunnels have played an important role in the construction of the transport network.
Chishuihe Bridge, located in Yanzhai village in Xishui county, is planned to open to traffic during the weeklong National Day holiday that begins Oct 1. The suspension bridge links Jiangjin district in Chongqing and Gulin county in Sichuan province.
The main span of the bridge is 1.2 km and its main support towers 243.5 meters tall. It spans the Chishui River at the provincial boundaries and connects to an expressway in Sichuan.
After almost two and a half years of construction, Dongwan Tunnel extending 4,515 meters is now open, marking a big step in the building of the Zheng'an-Xishui Expressway, the longest expressway in the city of Zunyi.
The expressway will pass through several areas with an altitude of more than 1.5 kilometer and across a 100-meter valley. As of April, 21 of the expressway's planned 25 tunnels have been completed. As a result of the comprehensive construction and updating of Guizhou's transport network, the province has become a key passageway of Belt and Road Initiative business and the Yangtze River Economic Belt, officials said.
songmengxing@chinadaily.com.cn
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Guizhou enters the high-speed railway era in 2014 and has since become an important crossroad for highspeed transport in western China. |
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Guiyang Longdongbao International Airport offers numerous international and regional flights to many places around the world. |
(China Daily 10/01/2019 page12)
