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

The second road across China’s largest desert has opened. The 424-km north-south highway runs across the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the names are the very stuff of romance. The road runs between the two important regional cities of Hotan and Aral by 550 km and cuts the traveling time by about seven hours.

The project cost RMB790 million ($107 million) and is expected to promote cargo and passenger traffic between the two cities. Hotan which is resource-rich and densely-populated and Aral, an underdeveloped new city on the northern edge of the desert.

The road was funded by the central government and construction began in June, 2005. It will provide easier access to the southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region as well as central and southern Asian countries such as Pakistan and Tajikistan.

The first highway across the Taklimakan, running 522 kilometers from Lunnan in the north, to Minfeng County in the south, was opened to traffic in 1995. However, vehicles bound for Aksu had to make a detour along the westernmost border of the desert.

Cao Jun, a veteran driver in Xinjiang said, ‘The new one is wider with less sharp turns than the first road, and the surface is very smooth,’

Making the road was not easy. About 96% of the highway runs through active sand areas and 82% was uninhabited and suffered from bad weather conditions. This is road making on a heroic scale.
Source: China.com

Overgrown and disused for much of the last 60 years, a ghost road, known as the Stillwell Road, that connects India to China via Burma, will soon reappear on maps of the region. The construction of the road claimed the lives of 1,100 US servicemen and many more local laborers during the second world war. But it helped bust a three-year Japanese land and sea blockade of China and hastened the end of the war. (There was a movie made of it, The Stillwell Road, narrated by Ronald Reagan.)

Reopening has been discussed for years. But as recently as 2004 it was reported: Despite their pleas, India and Burma have made it clear that they are not willing to meet the demand to have the road reopened any time. Militant groups dominate a huge area of the road, and leaders from India and Burma believe that if the road were opened, it would help the insurgent groups to carry forward their subversive activities in the region.

Now India and China are restoring the historic highway.

China has already converted its own 680km stretch into a six-lane highway and is helping to rebuild much of the road inside Burma. India is further behind, expecting to complete the transformation of a single-lane track ridden with pot-holes into a two-lane highway by March.
Source: Financial Times

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

108 cities in China were involved in a campaign with the theme of ‘Green Transport and Health’ to ease traffic congestion in the cities. The cities set one or more zones open only to pedestrians, cyclists, taxis and buses between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. The illustration gives a rough idea of the change this can bring. Top picture shows the system working; bottom picture normal congestion.

In southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, citizens have been called on to ‘walk quickly one kilometer a day’ by the sports bureau.

In Beijing, 176 kilometers of public transportation lanes have been put into use, which shall be lengthened to 250 kilometers by the end of this year, bringing the average speed of buses from 14 kilometers per hour to 20 kilometers during rush hour. And twenty-three new bus lines have gone into service.

So serious attempts are being made to stop congestion and pollution.

However, Guangzhou, city with a population of more than ten million people and one million cars, rejected Public Transportation Week.

An unnamed official with the municipal government said, ‘Limiting the use of cars is not practical in the city.’ Plainly the official knows nothing of London and Ken Livingstone. Perhaps it should be more widely publicised.
Source: China.org.cn

In Shanghai, Metro line offered a free trial ride on its first phase of track. When it opens at the end of the year it will become the first subway route from the north-east of the city to downtown.

This is also Urban Public Transport Week in 108 cities across the country including Shanghai.

City residents are encouraged to commute on foot, by bikes or ride Metros, buses and taxis to support the week’s theme of ‘green traffic and health.’

Metro Line 8 runs from Shiguang Road Station, across the Huangpu River and ends at Yaohua Road Station in Pudong, where the World Expo site is under construction. The route runs across Yangpu, Hongkou and Zhabei districts, located in the northeast parts of the city, and then goes through Huangpu and Luwan districts, along the Bund, before extending to Pudong.

According to the current construction schedule by the end of this year the city will see another 100-plus kilometers of new Metro routes and extensions completed.
Source: Shanghai Daily