On January 23, at the construction site of the Wuhan section of the Wuhan-Yangxin Expressway, Cao Guangjing, Vice Governor of Hubei Province, announced: "The first batch of key transportation projects in the province for 2019 has started." With this, 452 key transportation projects with a total investment of 54.68 billion yuan in Hubei Province have been launched in a concentrated manner.

　　"Starting construction is a decisive battle; the beginning is a sprint." Zhu Hanqiao, Party Secretary and Director of the Hubei Provincial Department of Transportation, said that in the last two months of last year, Hubei's transportation sector made great efforts to wrap up the annual targets and tasks, and planned ahead to advance the construction of the project pool, effectively giving play to the role of transportation project construction as the "stabilizing anchor" for steady economic growth.

　　Planning the Project Pool in Advance

　　In 2018, Hubei completed a total of 106.86 billion yuan in fixed asset investment in highways and waterways, up 9.2% year on year, accounting for 125.7% of the annual target, ranking seventh nationwide and first in Central China. The total mileage of expressways open to traffic reached 6,368 kilometers, with 513 kilometers of first-class highways and 1,207 kilometers of second-class highways completed; 24,000 kilometers of rural roads were newly built or reconstructed, more than 10,000 kilometers of beautiful rural roads were built, and 27,000 kilometers of the "455" safety life protection project were completed.

　　This year, in order to sustain last year's sound construction momentum, the Hubei Provincial Department of Transportation concentrated on the valuable period of about 70 days around the Spring Festival to launch large-scale construction of key transportation projects, with the concentrated start of construction two months earlier than last year.

　　Project construction has shown an encouraging pattern of "completing a batch, starting a batch, and reserving a batch." Among the 452 projects launched, there are 6 expressway projects including the Wuhan section of the Wuhan-Yangxin Expressway, 53 trunk highway projects including the Jingmen Xiangjing Ancient Road Reconstruction and Expansion Project, 7 water transport development projects including the Wuhan Longxin Logistics Wharf Project, 19 logistics station projects including the SF Express Wuhan E-commerce Industrial Park, and 367 "Four Good Rural Roads" projects.

　　Expanding Investment to Stabilize Growth

　　Among the transportation projects launched in this concentrated start, investment in January alone reached 36.17 billion yuan, nearly 10 billion yuan more than the total investment in the first quarter of last year. Zhu Hanqiao said that the focus will be on project construction, starting early and working solidly, making a good start and taking solid steps, setting off a new upsurge in transportation construction, and ensuring the fulfillment of the full-year targets with a "good start."

　　Hubei's planned fixed asset investment in highway and waterway transportation this year is 90 billion yuan, and the total investment scale of the key highway and waterway transportation projects launched this time has already reached 54.68 billion yuan. Among them, 21.49 billion yuan is for expressways, 20.33 billion yuan for trunk highways, 7.61 billion yuan for "Four Good Rural Roads," 650 million yuan for water transport development, and 4.6 billion yuan for logistics stations.

　　This year, Hubei Province will strive to complete 329 kilometers of expressways, 455 kilometers of first-class highways, and 800 kilometers of second-class highways; newly build or reconstruct 20,000 kilometers of rural roads; complete the renovation of 1,000 dangerous highway bridges and 20,000 kilometers of the highway safety protection "455" project; and the mileage of waterways of Grade III and above will exceed 2,000 kilometers.

　　Zhu Hanqiao said that the Party Group of the Hubei Provincial Department of Transportation will take "shoring up weak links and stabilizing investment" as a key task, accelerate the high-quality development of Hubei's transportation, do a good job in the three articles of "densification, quality improvement, and interconnectivity," actively implement the general requirements of the eight-character policy of "consolidating, enhancing, improving, and smoothing," and focus on projects, expand investment, and stabilize growth.