Jingzhou Daily News: On September 1, the 2nd Working Meeting of the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen Metropolitan Area Development Joint Office and the 2nd Joint Meeting on Building the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen National Comprehensive Transportation Hub were held in Jingzhou City.

At the meeting, Yichang, Jingzhou, Jingmen and Enshi jointly signed the "Three-Year Action Plan for Building the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen National Comprehensive Transportation Hub" and the "Memorandum on Deepening the Construction of Interconnected Transportation Projects in the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen Metropolitan Area".

"Three-Year Action Plan for Building the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen National Comprehensive Transportation Hub"(hereinafter referred to as the Plan) plans to devise a total of 408 comprehensive transportation projects with a total investment of 905.7 billion yuan, of which 430.5 billion yuan will be invested during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, laying the foundation for the province to build a demonstration zone for a strong transportation country and create a new-era thoroughfare connecting nine provinces.

The Plan closely follows four aspects—building a transportation hub cluster, smoothing the comprehensive transportation network, highlighting "water connectivity, intelligence and beauty", and improving the quality of transportation services—to create clustered, dynamic, distinctive and convenient transportation, and proposes 13 key tasks, including building the Three Gorges dam-crossing transfer hub, optimizing and improving comprehensive passenger transport hubs, building a collaboratively linked aviation hub, creating a horizontal comprehensive three-dimensional transportation corridor, building a vertical comprehensive transportation collaborative framework, building an integrated and efficient intercity transportation network, smoothing the large circulation of trunk highways with improved quality and efficiency, building a full-coverage inland river shipping system, building a river-sea multimodal transport system, building a digital transportation platform, creating landscape tourism scenic roads, creating a high-quality and high-efficiency transportation service system, and establishing an integrated and collaborative institutional mechanism in key areas.

The Plan proposes: break new ground in the first year, produce results in the second year, and become a demonstration in the third year.

According to the implementation requirements, within this year, the institutional mechanism for building the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen comprehensive transportation hub will be basically established, the organizational structure and working mechanism will be continuously improved, a batch of major projects will be planned and dynamically updated in due course, cooperative projects will be gradually launched, and a breakthrough start will be achieved.

By the end of next year, the prototype of the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen comprehensive transportation hub will be basically formed, the construction of high-speed railways and expressways in the metropolitan area will be accelerated, and the integrated operation of airports in the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen metropolitan area and the coordinated development of Yangtze River inland river ports will be initially realized.

In the third year, a 2-hour provincial transportation circle, a 1-hour intercity transportation circle, and a half-hour commuting circle (metropolitan area and cooperative development demonstration zone) will be formed, and demonstration-driven key projects and pilot experience will be developed in inland river shipping, multimodal transport, digital transportation, beautiful transportation and other aspects.

The "Memorandum on Deepening the Construction of Interconnected Transportation Projects in the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen Metropolitan Area" (hereinafter referred to as the Memorandum) mainly includes two parts: 2023 work objectives and work measures.

In the 2023 work objectives, the four cities and prefectures of Yichang, Jingzhou, Jingmen and Enshi agreed on the following:

First, densify the railway network; accelerate the construction of projects such as the Jingzhou-Jingmen High-Speed Railway and the Jingmen-Yichang section of the Yangtze River High-Speed Railway.

Second, improve the highway network; advance the capacity expansion and upgrading of national expressway networks such as the Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway, the Erenhot-Guangzhou Expressway and the Wuhan-Chongqing Expressway, advance the connectivity of provincial expressway networks such as the Dangyang-Zhijiang-Songzi Expressway and the Yidu-Laifeng Expressway, accelerate the construction of hard connectivity projects in the metropolitan area, complete three projects within the year including the Shayang County Jiaowei to Jingzhou boundary section of Provincial Highway 223, and, in conjunction with the adjustment of the provincial highway network plan, launch route scheme research on extending Provincial Highway 429 from Jingzhou to Yichang and other routes.

Third, enhance shipping capacity; deepen the Yangtze River, open up the Han River and connect tributaries, promote the upgrading of shipping capacity, and advance projects such as the 4.5-meter water depth regulation project for the Wuhan-Yichang section of the Yangtze River waterway.

Fourth, expand the civil aviation market; actively carry out civil aviation cooperation and cultivate civil aviation passenger flows.

Fifth, deepen industry collaboration; carry out exchanges and cooperation in areas such as joint overload control, prevention and control of pollution from ships and ports in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the creation of multimodal transport demonstration zones.

Schematic Map of the Scope of the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen Metropolitan Area

In terms of work measures, the Memorandum proposes establishing a quarterly joint meeting mechanism for advancing interconnected transportation projects in the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen metropolitan area, focusing on negotiating and resolving issues in cross-regional transportation projects such as unified technical standards, special topic approval and construction coordination; focusing on the interconnection of transportation in the Yichang-Jingzhou-Jingmen metropolitan area, jointly seeking support from the central and provincial governments in major project layout, major policy preferences and project funding arrangements; and jointly carrying out work such as overload control, prevention and control of pollution from ships and ports in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and water emergency rescue.