Archive for the 'expressways' Category

Tolls are exacted from drivers on more than half of China’s road-miles. A report says tollway operators, including some governments, have gone too far.

A National Audit Office (NAO) report February 27 said that, by the end of 2005, China’s 180,000 kilometers of toll roads comprised 55% of all national and provincial highways. The result is that driving is expensive, and the original reason for building toll roads has been twisted.

An example. Anyone who drives cross-country from Beijing to the southeastern city of Fuzhou will likely travel on two major highways and a provincial road whose tollgate tenders will collect a combined RMB1,600. A plane ticket between the two cities costs less.

According to the report:

158 illegal toll stations in 16 provinces had overcharged a total RMB14.9 billion by the end of 2005. Seven provinces increased tolls, adding RMB8.2 billion in charges.
Local governments approved extensions of toll contract periods for 35 roads, pushing revenues to ten times construction costs.
Beijing’s airport tollway was deemed legal but improper. Construction costs were footed by local governments partially with bank loans. But the tollway’s operators have charged drivers RMB3.2 billion between opening day 1993 and the end of 2005, and could receive another RMB9 billion before the contract expires. The total building cost was RMB1.17 billion.

NAO advised central and local governments to control the scale of tolls, increase government funding for road construction, and give particular attention to fine-tuning relevant laws and regulations. Having said that the report struck a despairing note in agreeing that that the current approach to building roads with loans and charge tolls would not change until at least 2020.

Toll roads have proliferated in China since 1984, when Beijing encouraged local governments to borrow from banks to build roads and pay off loans with toll proceeds. Toll road building became a lucrative business.

Toll roads have become cash cows for operators because pavement is easy to lay and charges even easier to collect.
Source: Cajing

The government is determined to have a better network of road and water transport and emergency response system in place by 2010 in order to reduce the number of accidents.

The Ministry of Communications (MOC) expects that the new system will help cut the death rate per 10,000 commercial vehicles by 40% and reduce the rate of major accidents per 10,000 vessels by 10%, compared to the figures for 2005.

Measures include improving highway design, setting up more injury-prevention facilities and keeping overloaded vehicles off the roads.

Efforts will also be made to improve maritime rescue and salvage operations.

Song Jiahui, the director of the MOC’s rescue and salvage bureau said once these steps have been taken, rescue vessels will take no more than 90 minutes to reach an accident in key areas such as the Bohai Bay, Qiongzhou Strait and the waters around Zhoushan Islands.
Source: China.com

The Economist with a major article — not all totally complimentary — on the galloping pace of building and expansion in China.

Some examples of growth.

Beijing’s new airport terminal, seen here during construction, was designed by the British firm Foster + Partners, and planned and built in four years by an army of 50,000 workers.

The terminal is 3km (1.8 miles) long. The floor space is 17% bigger than all the terminals at London’s Heathrow combined (including about-to-open Terminal Five). Part of a $3.8 billion expansion, which included the opening of a third runway in October, it is due to open at the end of this month, weeks ahead of schedule.

It is the ninth busiest airport in the world.

And it is part of the rush to improve China’s logistics infrastructure.

Between 2001 and the end of 2005 more was spent on roads, railways and other fixed assets than was spent in the previous 50 years. According to the state media, investment will see double-digit growth every year for the rest of the decade.

The world’s longest sea-crossing bridge is due to open in June: a 36km six-lane highway across Hangzhou Bay.
Shanghai is home to the current world-record holder for such a structure, the 32km Donghai bridge. This was opened less than three years ago to link the city with Yangshan port.
Yangshan is intended to be one of the world’s biggest deep-water facilities when completed at some point after 2010.
From August the 115km journey from Beijing to Tianjin, its nearest port, will be reduced to half an hour with the inauguration of a bullet-train link
Work began in January on a 1,300km line between Beijing and Shanghai which will be completed in five years’ time.
The world’s highest railway from Golmud to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa was completed in 2006.
Since the 1990s China has built an expressway network criss-crossing the country that is second only to America’s interstate highway system in length. By the end of 2007, some 53,600km of toll expressways had been built. The aim is to have 70,000km of expressways by 2020.
The World Bank says that China’s railways carry 25% of the world’s railway traffic on just 6% of its track length. In the past couple of years investment has grown considerably. This year’s target is $42 billion, compared with a total of $72 billion in the preceding five years.
The increase in air passenger traffic has been dramatic: from 7 million passengers in 1985 to over 185 million in 2007.
Source: The Economist

Plans for a four-lane highway from Hanoi to Kunming (shown here) appear to be moving apace now that the Asian Development Bank has agreed to a loan that will underwrite the Vietnamese side of the project.

The aim is the highway will be completed by 2012 which will give a direct route between northern Vietnam and southern China reducing the journey time from three days to nine hours.

Goods made in China’s Yunnan Province will gain quick access to the Vietnamese seaport of Haiphong, and Vietnamese exporters will be given the opportunity to reach untapped markets in China.

Ayumi Konishi, the Asian Development Bank’s country director in Vietnam, said, ‘Both countries are reaping the fruits of peace and cooperation, In one generation, they have moved from tanks and troops to trade and tourism.’

That neat bit of alliteration at the end does sound like the work of a good PR person.

The is the bank’s biggest single-project loan — $1.1 billion — to finance the 244-kilometer stretch of the highway from Hanoi to Lao Cai on the border with China. The Vietnamese government is contributing $100 million to the low-interest loan, to be paid off over 32 years.

The construction will add a section to the ambitious Asian Highway program under which 27 Asian countries have agreed to build a 140,000-kilometer network of roads that meet minimum uniform standards.

Improved transport connections could entice more investors into Vietnam, where lower wages than in parts of China give workers a competitive edge.

The Vietnamese government has placed a high priority of the development of its northern provinces. The four provinces the highway traverses — Vinh Phuc, Phu Tho, Yen Bai and Lao Cai — have poverty rates as high as 34%, compared with a national average of 20%. The construction of the highway is expected to cut poverty rates significantly.The highway will be a toll road that is expected to generate enough revenue to pay off the loans within a decade after it opens, the ADB said.
Source: International Herald Tribune

Trucks are the mules of China’s spectacularly expanding economy — ubiquitous and essential, yet highly noxious.

Trucks in China burn diesel fuel contaminated with more than 130 times the pollution-causing sulfur that the United States allows in most diesel.

The 10 million trucks on Chinese roads, more than a quarter of all vehicles in China are a major reason China accounts for half the world’s annual increase in oil consumption.

Cleaning up truck pollution presents complex problems for China’s leaders.

Forcing businesses and farmers to buy more expensive vehicles could put a drag on the economy. Oil giants like Sinopec, losing money on every gallon of diesel they refine because of the low sales cost, upgrade refineries slowly, if at all.

Evan Jia, a Sinopec spokesman said, ‘Sinopec is trying our best to purchase low-quality crudes - much heavier and more sulfur content. We buy those kinds of crudes to lower the purchasing cost.’

Low state-subsidized diesel prices frequently make trucks more cost-effective than trains, which pollute less. Demand for diesel at service stations is so great, and supplies are so tight, that rationing and shortages have become common.

Since 2000, sales of heavy-duty trucks have risen sixfold while car sales have risen eightfold.

Mainland Chinese atmospheric scientists concluded in an analysis this year in The Journal of Environmental Sciences that in Guangzhou, particles were the pollutant farthest out of line with air-quality norms 226 days a year.

A separate academic study of diesel exhaust in Guangzhou found that Chinese trucks put out particles in unusually large quantities and sizes. For the very long, thorough and balanced article click on Source.
Source: International Herald Tribune

Approval has been given for a bridge connecting Shanghai’s Chongming Island and Jiangsu Province. The plan is part of a regional strategy to further integrate Shanghai with neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

The bridge will span 7 km of the Yangtze River, linking Shanghai’s Chongming Island to the city of Qidong in Jiangsu.

The Shanghai section will be linked to an ongoing project connecting mainland Shanghai with Chongming Island by tunnel, bridge and expressway.

It is hoped that it will be completed by 2009 when it will cut travel time between Pudong and Chongming to 20 minutes. It would also cut travel time between Shanghai and Qidong to just over an hour and put any major city in Jiangsu Province within three hours’ drive from the municipality.

According to the city’s Labor Daily, construction on a bridge between Chongming and Qidong would officially start next year and finish in 2010. The construction would eventually become part of a highway network connecting Shanghai and Xi’an, Shaanxi Province.
Source: People’s Daily Online

Over the next year or so China is expected finally to phase out its steam engines. By 2020, China wants to have 100,000km of rail lines, up from 74,000km now. It also wants to ensure that more than half of those lines are double track, up from 40%, and that the proportion electrified is raised from 30% to more than 50%. It will probably cost RMB2,000 billion.

Huang Min, chief economist at the Ministry of Railways said, ‘It will be difficult to rely completely on government funding for these projects.’

Help will be sought from private and foreign investors. It needs the investment. Huang Min said the rail network is only able to meet 35% of demand, forcing customers to use more expensive and polluting along distance trucks.

But while China is now opening the door to overseas investment, will foreigners be keen to come up with the needed funds?

A key obstacle is the Railway Ministry’s dual role as controller of the network and policymaker, which contributes to a lack of regulatory clarity and vulnerability to bureaucratic whim. Even if technically independent, private lines will remain dependent on official favor. Huang Min also admits that local governments will play a role in talks to decide prices.
Source: Financial Times

Larry Alberts, director of consultancy Oliver Wyman, a specialist in the surface transportation and energy sectors who advises companies on the Asian market and customer and business strategy, has given his view on China’s logistics market. And, if you are involved in any way with logistics in China it is worth clicking CargoNews Asia and reading the whole article.

He writes that a decade ago in China the problem with logistics was insufficient infrastructure, such as minimal available freight capacity on railroads.

As recently as a dozen years ago the geographic coverage of the railways was comparable to that of the US at the time of its civil war. Poor roads meant trucking was highly unreliable, and limited use of containers and poor warehouse conditions resulted in high rates of damage and loss to goods being handled.

Then he becomes more upbeat.

However, over the past 10 years there’s been huge investment and major improvement in infrastructure, quite visible in the roads and seaports, the expansion of the railway westward and the capacity upgrade on key trunk lines. In the 10th five-year plan, 6,000 km of railroad, 200,000 km of new roads, and more than 140 deep-water berths were planned and largely completed by 2006.

It goes on from there to give concrete advice on mergers and acquisitions and the essential due diligence. Well worth reading.
Source: CargoNews Asia

A thorough, and quite long, examination of logistics in China has been published by World Trade China and you can connect to it through Source at the end of this item.

What it says is that in recent months, a number of major U.S. transportation and logistics companies have launched new services in China as a way to move up the supply chain and take control of freight at the manufacturing facility. Experts warn that the road isn’t always easy going in that China’s transportation and logistics sectors, particularly the ground transportation segment, are highly fragmented and rules and regulations are constantly changing. But, it says, it is well worth the effort.

Prior to 2005, U.S. firms were required to establish a joint venture with a Chinese company to operate in the country’s transportation and logistics market. The country’s membership in the WTO in 2002, combined with market opening reforms and increasing manufacturing and sourcing activity has fueled the expansion of U.S. firms in China.

After summing up the overall situation the article looks at various individual aspects.

Railways: In the five year plan the country will develop 40 intermodal terminals, 18 logistics parks, and 100 container handling terminals. Government spending of $190 billion in then rail sector will add 16,000 kilometers of track by the end of the decade.
Highways: Fourteen expressways are being built, including one from Beijing to Hong Kong and Macao. The total expressway mileage in China amounts to over 41,000 kilometers, ranking the country second in the world. By 2020, the country is likely to overtake the U.S. as the country with the biggest highway system.

The full article is a very thorough and fair summary of the current situation and appears to have no ax to grind; no particular agenda to follow.
Source: World Trade China

It was done specifically for the Olympics but the four-day trial in which more than one million cars were banned from Beijing’s roads has shown a way ahead.

He Bin, a lawyer living on the outskirts of Beijing, said, ‘I would like to leave my car in the garage forever if the traffic is as smooth as it was during those four days. It usually takes an hour and 20 minutes to drive to my office, but the bus trip saved me half an hour. I listened to music and read newspapers on the bus.’

Most Internet users hailed the temporary ban as a success. ‘The ban has taken Beijing back to the 1980s when there were no traffic jams. I hope the ban will never be lifted’ wrote one netizen at an online forum of Sina.com.

About 1.3 million cars were removed from the city roads each day on August 17-20 to test the effect on air quality for the Olympic Games.

Drivers with even-numbered license plates, excluding taxis, buses and emergency vehicles, were banned Friday and Sunday. Odd-numbered cars were banned on Saturday and Monday.

The air pollution index was between 93 and 95, down from 116. That is still an unacceptably high figure but it is heading in the right direction.

However, very few people voluntarily give up driving their cars. This problem has been studied all over the world and there is evidence that even in bad traffic drivers see their cars as a protective cocoon from the pressures of office, home and other people. It is their space for an hour or so.

And car drivers, by and large, fight against abandoning their private space.

An editorial in the Beijing News said the temporary traffic ban could solve Beijing’s traffic woes during a specific time period, but there remains conflicts of interests if the ban is put into force permanently.

The editorial argued that car owners already pay several kinds of fares to drive their cars so if their rights have to be sacrificed for Beijing’s blue sky, they deserve compensation from the government.

An alternative argument could be that if they do not need cars they can sell them and save the money for themselves. Owning and running a car is not a cheap hobby.

Xie Shaodong, deputy head of the Environmental Sciences and Engineering College of Peking University, believes Beijing cannot cure its pollution troubles by simply restricting cars.

Xie Shaodong said, ‘In the long run, building a fast and accessible transportation network will be a more effective way to improving Beijing’s air quality.’

Which is a sort of self-fulfilling argument. There is a fast and accessible transportation network being built and the problem is to get drivers out of their cars and on to public transportation.

Beijing will build eight new subways ahead of 2012, bringing the number of subway lines to 14, totaling 407 kilometers.
Bicycles were more in evidence on the streets over the four days of the test and a Beijing company plans to make 50,000 bikes available for rent at 230 outlets around the city before the Olympics.

Source: China Daily