One of China’s poorest provinces has announced plans to spend $75bn on motorway construction over the next five years.
Guizhou, in the south west of the country, has already connected its main cities with motorways and its villages with asphalt roads. It now plans to build fast roads between its beauty spots, train stations, airports, and to connect its road network with neighbouring provinces.
The target is to bring the province’s network to 10,000km by 2023 – more than twice the total length of motorways in the UK.
Guizhou is a mountainous, subtropical region, which has the third lowest per capita income in the country, standing at $9,500 compared with Beijing’s $33,700, according to the government’s December 2017 figures.
However, the total output of Guiyang, its capital city, has grown more than four times since 2010.
A rendering of the cable-stayed Pingtang Bridge (www.highestbridges.com)
The scheme is likely to involve a number of spectacular civil engineering projects, like the Daxiaojing Bridge, presently under construction in the south of the province (pictured). This will carry a road between the neighbouring cities of Pingtang and Luodian.
The province will also be home to the Pingtang Bridge project, a 2.1km-long cable-stayed viaduct with a 328m bridge tower, the tallest ever built in China. A video of the Pingtang under construction can be seen here.
As well as building expressways, the province announced last September that it plans to construct 97,000km of rural roads. Funding is being provided by loans from the Bank of Guizhou and the Bank of Guiyang.
Main image: A computer rendering of the deck-arched Daxiaojing Bridge in Guizhou (www.highestbridges.com)
