China opened the world’s longest cross-sea bridge last week running from the port city of Ningpo and Shanghai across Hangzhou Bay. The idea is to cut a considerable amount of time for everyone traveling between the two ports.

Well, not quite for everyone.

Hundreds of drivers have been fined already for driving too slow in order to enjoy the view.Understandable. The 22.4 mile structure travels right across Hangzhou Bay and is, in itself, a most remarkable spectacle.

It is designed to slash travel time between Ningbo and the financial hub Shanghai from four hours to two and a half.

Unless of course you are taking the wife and kiddies out for a bit of bracing fresh air and a view of the bridge.

Thus, since its opening on May 1, police have fined more than 300 drivers, most for driving too slowly or illegal parking on the emergency lanes while enjoying the ocean view and taking photos.

Long lines of cars carrying whole families eager to see the bridge and sea vista have caused serious traffic problems and led to a series of accidents.

The $1.7-billion bridge’s much publicized ’sightseeing platforms’ in the middle of the span will not be ready for tourists for another two years, local media have reported.
Source: Reuters

YRC Worldwide subsidiaries Roadway and YRC Logistics Global have rolled out an expedited ocean service from China to the United States.

YRC said this adds new supply chain services at origin and destination for global shippers, as well as expand its logistics offerings to more global markets.

A spokesperson said, ‘Global supply chains are more dynamic than ever. This offering provides a unique service for those customers who seek a faster service at a more reasonable price. Our customers are sourcing globally, and we are providing solutions to that end.’

The new expedited ocean service from China to the U.S. will provide transit time improvement for standard LCL (less-than-container-load) ocean service; significant cost reduction over air; many Chinese origins with multiple sailings per week that will provide faster speed to market; guaranteed delivery or your money back if it fails to deliver by scheduled delivery date; and faster inventory turns.

The service will originate from seven ports in China — Dalian, Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen — and the Port of Long Beach in the United States.

This service is expected to be at least six days faster than standard ocean transit and will offer priority unloading of containers at the Port of Long Beach.
Source: Logistics Management

Tong Mengda, chief economist of Ningbo Port Group says the Port of Ningbo in Zhejiang province in the eastern China expects to handle container throughput of over ten million TEUs — where a TEU is a standard container — in 2008.

The railway, highway, and shipping and aviation infrastructure have improved so that Tong Mengda thinks the the container throughput will reach 10.6 million TEUs and the cargo throughput will be about 360 million tonnes in 2008.

This past year — 2207 — the port recorded a container throughput of over nine million TEUs. The figure is 31% higher than the container throughput in 2006. For seven consecutive years the port has had the largest growth among all major coastal ports in China. The new container throughput may help the port obtain the 11th position, up from the 13th, in global ranking.
Source: CargoNews Asia

U.S. AMB Property, a major global owner and developer of warehouses and distribution centres, has launched an industrial real estate project in eastern China as part of its planned expansion.

AMB Beilun Port Distribution Center is located in the Ningbo Economic and Technological Development Zone. The 37,000-sq-meter distribution center project has just started in the eastern port city of Ningbo, near Shanghai and will be completed by mid-2008.

Hamid Moghadam, AMB’s chairman and chief executive, said, ‘China represents an important part of AMB’s expanding global platform. The center paves the way for future development of port distribution property supporting China’s booming seaport trade.’

He said China is on track to overtake Japan as AMB’s largest market in Asia in three years in terms of development area and in 5 to 7 years in terms of portfolio value.

Other AMB properties in China include a 31,800-sq-meter distribution center in Shanghai and a 96,700-sq-meter distribution center, which has been leased to global express delivery and logistics provider DHL.

China will reach the magic 100 million TEU mark this year. (For the record a TEU is a Twenty foot Equivalent Unit or a sort of standard container. One 40 ft. Container (FEU) is equal to two TEU’s.) It recorded 72 million TEUs in the first eight months of this year. Last year it was 93 million TEUs.

Wang Qingyun, director general of the Communications and Transport Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, said, ‘There is no doubt that the total China container throughput will exceed the 100 million TEU mark this year.’ He said ‘China container cargo is still in the fast lane due to strong demand’.

Leading port in rate of growth, not overall size, was Guangzhou, which in the first eight months had a throughput of 5.97 million TEUs, up 42.2%.
Ningbo came second in container cargo growth. It handled 6.11 million TEUs in the first eight months, up 36.2%.
Shanghai came in third in growth rate with throughput at 17.09 million TEUs, up 22.4%. This year it expects it will reach 25 million TEUs this year. The port has already overtaken Hong Kong in size.

In the first eight months China’s 23% growth rate was much lower than in previous years. General cargo throughput was up 15.7% in the eight-month period compared with 18.5%.

Wang Qingyun said, ‘We’re no longer looking for high-speed growth, instead we are going after moderate growth that is sustainable and ecologically healthy.’
Source: CargoNews Asia

The 36 km (22 miles) long Hangzhou Bay Bridge, which is the world’s longest sea bridge, starts at Jiaxing, near Shanghai, and ends at Cixi, about 70 km (43 miles) from Ningbo city in east China’s Zhejiang Province. The $1.5 billion, S-shaped bridge shows that China is investing in infrastructure to keep raising the potential of the world’s fourth-largest economy.

By cutting the transit time between the two port cities to two and a bit hours from four, the 36 km (22.5 mile) sea bridge, the world’s longest, will give a further boost to one of the most prosperous corners of China when it opens next June.

Lu Zheng, who directs the Institute of Industrial Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said, ‘Construction of the bridge will accelerate the flow of goods and talent and give a push to the integration of economic development in the Yangtze River Delta.’

This is all part of the logistics improvement in China which has seen spending on fixed assets increase steadily at around 25% annually in recent years.

Just a week before the Hangzhou Bay bridge was finished on June 26, workers completed the Sutong bridge over the Yangtze river, less than 300 km away.

That $845 million bridge also set a record: its 1,088 meter span makes it the world’s longest cable-stayed bridge.

China plans to spend $205 billion on its railways alone between 2006 and 2010.

Like any number of Chinese cities, Ningbo has taken to heart the old Chinese saying ‘If you want to be rich, you must first build roads.’ It plans to spend more than RMB30 billion ($4 billion) between 2006 and 2010 on railways, highways and bridges.

Ningpo is a city of 5.5 million, it is home to a swarm of manufacturers including well-known Chinese names such as Ningbo Bird, a mobile phone maker, and Younger, a garment producer.
Shorter traveling times will make it easier for manufacturers to team up with design professionals in Shanghai.

Lu Zheng, the CASS researcher, said, ‘That will definitely help Ningbo upgrade its manufacturing industry since Shanghai is now increasingly becoming a design hub in addition to its role as China’s financial and research and development center.’
Source: Boston.com

Matson Navigation, the US shipping firm operating in the Pacific, is ‘actively exploring opportunities’ for a second route to China. Last year the company invested $365 million in vessels, containers and terminal assets to inaugurate the China-America route. This has port calls in Ningbo and Shanghai and then on to Long Beach, California.

Allen Donae, the company’s chairman says that the 15-month-old container shipping route ‘exceeded our expectations’, with revenue now accounting for about 15% of Matson’s business turnover.

The weekly service, which handles 50,000 containers annually, passes through Ningbo and Shanghai and then takes 11 days to get to Long Beach.

James Andrasick, Matson’s president and CEO, said, ‘Our first route is near capacity but we have no plan to add capacity to the existing route at the moment.’ But a second China-US route is now part of the company’s strategic planning. No specific route has yet been chosen.

Matson has no plan to invest in Chinese ports as other international shipping giants, such as Maersk, have done in China. James Andrasick said, ‘We are a relatively smaller player in the Chinese market and we don’t want to run before we can walk.’
Source: Cargo News Asia

The longest sea-crossing bridge in the world is that which is extending across Hangzhou Bay. According to the Oriental Morning Post workers have placed the last reinforced girder onto the western part of the main channel of the cable-stayed bridge.

Chen Rufa, the chief engineer of the cross-sea bridge project, said, ‘The placing the last girder usually means the completion of construction of the navigation channel bridge’s main body.’

It won’t be totally finished until next June but when operating it will link Jiaxing and Ningbo cities. Thus it will shorten the distance between Shanghai and Ningbo in neighboring Zhejiang Province by 120 kilometers.

The Ningbo-Hangzhou Bay Bridge is 36-kilometers — think of it crossing the Channel at Dover — with an estimated investment of RMB14 billion.

It is much longer than those other wonders of the world, the 25.23-kilometer Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in the United States and the 25-kilometer Saudi Arabia Baharian Causeway which connects Saudi with Bahrian.

The six-lane bridge will have a speed limit of 100 kilometers-per-hour. It has been estimated that traffic will reach 45,000 vehicles a day during its first year of operation.

The bridge toll, planned to be RMB80, is now awaiting the approval of the Zhejiang government.
Source: Shanghai Daily

The Hangzhou Bay Bridge will, when finished, span 36 kilometres across the East China Sea. When it opens next year, it will be the longest trans-oceanic bridge in the world. If it could be moved to the straits of Dover it would link England with France.

It is costing RMB11.8 billion ($1.54) of which 70% is being put up by private sources and 30% by state agencies. They will see their investment back via tolls and lower transport costs.

By shortening the journey time from the port of Ningbo to the economic powerhouse of Shanghai by a couple of hours, the bridge will further stimulate regional growth to the tune of as much as 15% a year.

The bridge is also the last link in the motorway linking Beijing and the north to the booming eastern and southern seaboard. This is fixed asset investment. In China fixed asset investment accounts for more than 50% of the national income (against 14% in the UK) — more than any major economy anywhere in history in peacetime.
Source: The Independent