On the afternoon of April 14, Sichuan Guang'an staged the First Joint Conference on Co-building a Pilot Demonstration Zone of Integrated Transportation Development in Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle. The integrated transportation construction involves high-speed railways, highways, waterway, and aviation channels. In the future, it will take only 22 minutes from Guang'an to Chongqing.

The demonstration zone has formed a highway-dominated mode of transportation.

“To seize the opportunity of the construction of Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, Guang’an must improve its transportation first,” said Li Jianqin, Secretary of CPC Committee of Guang’an.

According to the Action Plan on Co-building a Pilot Demonstration Zone of Integrated Transportation Development in Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle  (the Action Plan for short) issued on April 14, the pilot area and demonstration zone of integrated transportation development in Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle should form an overall opening-up pattern that features four-way connection.

According to the Action Plan, there are seven railway projects in the demonstration zone. The highest speed of Chongqing-Xi’an High-Speed Railway and Chengdu-Suining-Guang’an-Zhongxian-Guizhou High-Speed Railway is planned to reach 350km/h.

Li Jianqin said, “Guang’an and Chongqing will build a railway-based demonstration zone and strengthen the comprehensive transportation system that takes railways as the focus, and highways and waterways as the support, and is supplemented by other modes of transportation. The opening of Chongqing-Xi’an High-Speed Railway in the future will cut the travel time between Guang’an and Chongqing to 22 minutes.”

A total of 18 expressways and trunk lines to be interconnected

Besides high-speed railways, Guang’an and its adjacent districts/counties in Chongqing will be connected via highways, waterways and aviation channels.

There will form a highway network running in all directions in the demonstration zone by virtue of the existing and planned expressways and trunk highways. The network will not only connect Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport, Nanpeng Highway Bonded Logistics Center (Type B), Guoyuan Port, and other major transportation infrastructure but also strengthen the connection with outbound highways. According to the introduction, the demonstration zone will build six new expressways.

Waterways and aviation channels will be interconnected with sea-bound channels.

Through constructing four hubs of rail, road, water, and air, the demonstration zone is going to build a comprehensive and integrated transportation system. That is to say, the construction of waterways and aviation channels in the demonstration zone will be put on the agenda. In this way, the Jialing River will be linked with the Qujiang River in Guang’an.

According to the Action Plan, the two cities will make full use of the Golden Waterway of the Yangtze River and smooth and upgrade the channels of Jialing River and Qujiang River. They also plan to promote the construction of inbound railway branch lines to the ports, develop rail-road-water multimodal transportation, create important transportation support for the shipping center in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and deeply integrated into the construction of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

In terms of aviation hub, they are going to improve the transportation support capacity of Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport and speed up the renovation and expansion of this airport and Qianjiang Wulingshan Airport. They will start building Guang’an Airport and Fuling Airport, promoting the development of the general aviation cluster and jointly constructing the core carrier of the international aviation hub in Western China.