Full text: China's Rural Roads in the New Era
Xinhua | November 29, 2024
IV. Safer, More Durable, and More Comfortable Rural Roads
Understanding that both construction and maintenance are essential for road development, China engages in scientific and comprehensive maintenance of rural roads. By improving road conditions, ensuring transport safety, and carrying out roadside greening and beautification programs, the country has seen a steady improvement in the maintenance efficiency of its rural roads and a growth in their service capacity.
1. Creating a Beautiful Environment for Smooth, Safe and Comfortable Travel
The effective maintenance of China's rural roads has brought marked improvements to road conditions, transport safety, and the road environment, enabling smoother, safer, and more comfortable travel.
Realizing a significant improvement in road conditions. China has increased investment in rural road maintenance and ensured regular maintenance across the board. It has also launched major maintenance projects for rural roads, accounting for more than 5 percent of rural maintenance mileage annually.
Over the past decade, a total of 1.84 million km of rural roads have been repaired and maintained, raising the proportion of rural roads classified as premier, good, and medium3 from 79 percent to 91.1 percent, essentially realizing full coverage and guaranteeing quality of maintenance.
Achieving a greater capacity for transport safety. China has improved its rural road infrastructure, identified and removed safety hazards, and strengthened transport safety management, achieving greater inherent consistent safety and enabling a better emergency response for rural road transport.
In 2023, the number of rural road traffic accidents with a death toll of more than three dropped by 36.5 percent from the 2013 figure, and the number of accidents with a death toll of more than 10 fell by 85.7 percent.
Making continuous progress in optimizing the road environment. China has taken comprehensive measures to make rural roads tidy, green and beautiful. In total, 990,000 km of roads have been separated from farmlands and 620,000 km of roads have been separated from residential housing, making these rural roads more neat and pleasant.
2. Promoting Standard and Professional Road Maintenance
A well-functioning rural road network relies 30 percent on construction and 70 percent on maintenance. To ensure intact facilities and smooth traffic for rural roads, China has improved the technical framework for maintenance, developed advanced and applicable maintenance technologies, and raised maintenance efficiency.
Promoting scientific decision-making for road maintenance. China has integrated scientific decision-making into the entire process of rural road maintenance, optimal comprehensive benefits throughout the full lifecycle of roads. Based on technical condition assessment of roads, maintenance needs analysis, and maintenance planning, and leveraging technical, economic, safety and environmental considerations, the country makes informed decisions on its maintenance projects, thus providing a structured framework for its rural road maintenance work.
To promote the automatic examination of rural road conditions, China has applied R&D efforts to automatic vehicles and portable devices, and applied big data and AI technologies to automatic examination in the process of road maintenance inspection, road administration inspection, and passenger and freight transport. The automation rate of road surface condition examination reached 70 percent in 2023. Analysis and application of data collected from road condition examination has also been strengthened to support scientific decision-making, leading to more refined and precise maintenance of rural roads.
Standardizing road maintenance operations. China has promulgated a range of technical standards and specifications, including Technical Specifications for Maintenance of Rural Highway, Standards for Rural Highway Condition Assessment, and Budget Compilation Method for Rural Road Maintenance.
To keep rural roads in good condition, the government has strengthened regular maintenance by carrying out routine inspections, daily upkeep operations, and necessary minor repairs. Special emphasis is given to preventative maintenance, with structured maintenance projects in place, which effectively extend the service life of rural roads. Repair maintenance has been implemented through professional design and targeted measures. Specialized maintenance has been improved, allowing quicker upgrading or restoration of services. Emergency maintenance has been prioritized, enabling the quickest possible resumption of safe travel in emergencies resulting in road damage, traffic disruptions, or major transport safety hazards.
Creating diverse organizational models of road maintenance. China has systematically advanced market-oriented reform of rural road maintenance and taken steps to develop a rational division of work between the government and the market in organizing road maintenance. This has made maintenance operations more structured, standardized and efficient.
Preventative and repair maintenance projects are allocated through bidding and tendering, recruiting professional teams to provide specialized maintenance services.
Novel organizational models of rural road maintenance are encouraged, such as combined tendering for the construction and maintenance of trunk highways and rural roads, overall contracting for zonal maintenance of rural roads, and combined tendering for rural road construction and maintenance.
Regular maintenance combines general and professional maintenance. Residents along the routes are actively involved through technical training to build stable teams for general maintenance.
Applying new technologies, techniques, materials and equipment. Application of these four elements plays a significant role in raising road maintenance quality, extending road service life, reducing maintenance costs, and facilitating sustainable development of the road transport industry.
New techniques for road maintenance have been employed, such as cold in-place recycling of asphalt pavement, hot central plant recycling of asphalt pavement, and rubblization for an asphalt overlay of cement pavement. New technologies for waste recycling have been applied, covering discarded pavement materials, worn-out tires, solid industrial waste, and construction waste. New materials have been applied in road safety facilities, including lightweight high-strength steel. New equipment has been introduced, such as new paver models and small pavement crack filling machines. These new applications have produced significant results in reducing costs, shortening project duration, conserving energy, and protecting the environment.
3. Prioritizing Transport Safety
China has redoubled its efforts to address rural road safety hazards and improve safety infrastructure, ensuring safe and easy travel and providing reliable and smooth transport.
Strengthening safety facilities. China enforces a system for synchronizing the design, construction and commissioning of road safety facilities with the road construction project. Solid actions have been taken to further refine the management of rural road safety facilities and traffic order.
To address rural road safety hazards, the country has launched and refined a project for travel safety and a pilot project for greater coverage of traffic lights and speed bumps. Over the past decade, the rural road travel safety project has covered a total road length of 1.23 million km, and consistent improvement has been made in safety facilities, including road signs, pavement markings, speed bumps, and traffic lights, ensuring a rising level of rural road safety.
Renovating old and dangerous bridges. Bridges are key constructions in transport networks. Renovation of old and dangerous bridges underpins safe bridge operations for smooth rural road transport.
China has strengthened bridge management and regular safety inspection for key bridges, and implemented the 10 regulations for bridge operation safety, including strict accountability, information disclosure, and funding guarantees. It has also carried out special programs on highway bridge guardrail safety, single-column pier bridge safety, and standardization of bridge information and bridge load limit signs for rural road transport.
Over the past decade, a total of 58,000 old and dangerous bridges in the rural road network have been renovated; the total number of dangerous bridges has decreased on a yearly basis; the proportion of Grade I, II and III bridges4 has increased from 83.2 percent to 98 percent; and the durability of rural highway bridges has been consistently improved.
4. Improving Road Network Resilience for Greater Reliability
Putting people and lives first, and coordinating high-quality development and high-level safety, China has improved disaster readiness and mitigation for rural road transport, and strengthened safety resilience and emergency response for the rural road network in order to ensure effective protection of lives and property.
Increasing emergency preparation. China has a vast territory and a complex terrain with countless rivers and mountains prone to floods and geological disasters. Disaster readiness and mitigation are not only emergency measures for the country but also its long-term priorities.
China has promulgated the Guidelines on Further Improving Disaster Readiness and Mitigation for Rural Road Transport and strengthened the public emergency management mechanisms for rural roads, ensuring better response to public emergencies, road safety incidents, and natural disasters.
Building upon the national equipment and material reserve centers for highway emergency response in different regions, China has made progress in establishing local reserve centers for highway emergency response supplies. As a result, a highway emergency reserve system is taking shape, characterized by well-designed distribution, a full range of supplies, and quick response.
China has carried out systematic expansion and renovation of rural road management stations and maintenance squads, improving their reserve functions for emergency response equipment, supplies and devices.
China has built up rural road emergency rescue forces composed of both professionals and the general public, and boosted their emergency response capabilities by intensifying drills for contingency plans, improving personnel training, and increasing transport capacity.
Strengthening road safety inspection. To identify and remove safety hazards for rural road transport, China has strengthened targeted inspections on key road sections during critical time periods in addition to regular inspection on all road sections.
Categorized, graded and specialized measures are in place for natural disaster response. In preparation for imminent floods, typhoons, and other severe weather, drainage facilities including side ditches and drainage ditches are cleared in a timely manner. Intensified inspections are carried out on key road sections such as those with high slopes, sharp turns, steep gradients, proximity to cliffs, water bodies or other dangers, natural disaster risks, and historical damage from disasters. Essential precaution projects are implemented where necessary.
Under severe weather, such as low temperatures, rain, snow, and freezing conditions, targeted inspections are carried out on key road sections prone to snow accumulation or ice formation; preemptive measures such as spreading anti-skid materials, deicing agents, and snow-melting agents are employed, and ice and snow are removed to prevent accumulation; and safety reminders, preventive alerts, and warning signs are better used to ensure a smooth road network.
Ensuring road access for emergency response. China has strengthened safety monitoring, early warning, and traffic dispatch for its rural road network, providing dynamic information on weather changes and early warning on disasters, and activating timely preparatory or emergency response.
The country has put in place a coordinated early warning and response mechanism and a direct warning mechanism for prompt frontline response to imminent disasters, making onsite emergency preparation and evacuation more effective. Emergency routes are opened up in a timely manner to ensure safe and smooth transport of rescue personnel and equipment. To ensure safe traffic and orderly living and working conditions after disasters, the government has organized efficient emergency road repairs, increased financial support, and facilitated post-disaster recovery and reconstruction.
3 According to the Highway Performance Assessment Standard, the technical conditions of highways are rated at five levels: premier, good, medium, inferior, and substandard.
4 According to the Standards for Technical Condition Evaluation of Highway Bridges, the technical conditions of highway bridges are rated at five levels: Grade I, Grade II, Grade III, Grade IV, and Grade V. Grade IV and Grade V bridges are dangerous bridges.