Ministry intent to revive road projects

The Ministry of Transport has called for promoting effective investments in the sector, urging work resumption on major projects to meet the country's annual investment goal on the traffic network.

Resumption of work on the Qingshuijiang Bridge is underway in Jianhe county, southwest China's Guizhou province, Feb. 21, 2020. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"Transportation investment has always been an important part of infrastructure investment," Fan Zhenyu, deputy director of the ministry's comprehensive planning department, said on Tuesday. "The ministry attaches great importance to it and will vigorously promote effective investment in the sector."

The ministry will push forward the resumption of a batch of construction projects that are in line with the country's development strategies, he said at a news conference.

Nearly 39% of the country's railway projects that were under construction previously have restarted so far, as have 37.2% of the highway and waterway projects costing over 1 billion yuan (US$142 million) and 25.9% of the civil aviation facilities, he said, adding that the ministry will fast-track a number of new construction projects as well.

Fan also said that transportation authorities will adopt an electronic bidding system to ensure normal and orderly project bidding.

China plans to spend at least 2.7 trillion yuan on transportation infrastructure projects in 2020, including 800 billion yuan on railways, 1.8 trillion yuan on roads and waterways and 90 billion yuan on civil aviation facilities, according to the ministry.

China's transportation authority has been making great efforts to maintain smooth and steady transportation as a growing number of people return to work and businesses resume operations amid the ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak.

Fan said on Tuesday that the ministry has carried out various policies to restore transportation in different regions in line with their classifications of epidemic risk.

For the week of Feb. 16 to Feb. 22, the country's highway network handled 66.4 million freight trips, a week-on-week increase of 95.4%, as well as 22.2 million passenger trips, up 136% compared with the previous week, he said at a news conference.

As of Monday, 27 provincial-level regions have resumed interprovincial and intercity bus services, he said, adding that among them, 26 regions have stepped up the use of chartered buses to help some 477,000 migrant workers return to their workplaces after the Spring Festival.

Fan also noted that 115 prefecture-level cities and 158 county-level cities had resumed public transportation services by Monday. Currently, a total of 505 cities, or more than 70% of all cities, have restored public transportation, he added.