2021 is the opening year of the 14th Five-Year Plan and a crucial year for accelerating the building of a transportation powerhouse. Recently, the '14th Five-Year Plan' blueprints for comprehensive transportation development have emerged in Shanghai, Hainan, Zhejiang and other regions, with projects worth trillions of yuan set to be launched. Railway and rail transit construction remains a hot focus, and investment in airports and other sea and air hubs will also increase.

After long-term development, China's comprehensive transportation has achieved a historic transformation from 'bottleneck constraints' to 'overall alleviation' and then to 'basic adaptation', and China has become a veritable transportation giant. However, in the face of the new situation and new tasks of accelerating the building of a transportation powerhouse and serving the comprehensive building of a modern socialist country, China's comprehensive transportation system still has problems of unbalanced and inadequate development, such as poor quality, low efficiency and weak resilience.

Under this background, comprehensive transportation is comprehensively speeding up to 'shore up weak links'. The Outline of the National Comprehensive Three-dimensional Transportation Network Plan issued in February this year proposes that by 2035, a modern, high-quality national comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network that is convenient and smooth, economically efficient, green and intensive, intelligently advanced, and safe and reliable will be basically completed, realizing international and domestic connectivity, three-dimensional and smooth access to major cities across the country, and effective coverage of county-level nodes, strongly supporting the 'National 123 Travel Transportation Circle' (1-hour commuting within metropolitan areas, 2-hour access within city clusters, and 3-hour coverage of major cities across the country) and the 'Global 123 Express Logistics Circle' (delivery within 1 day domestically, within 2 days to neighboring countries, and within 3 days to major cities worldwide).

The '14th Five-Year Plan' period is an important window of opportunity, and various regions have successively finalized the relevant 'blueprints'. Recently, the Department of Transportation of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region held a review meeting on the 'Guangxi Comprehensive Transportation Development 14th Five-Year Plan' and the 'Guangxi Comprehensive Three-dimensional Transportation Network Plan (2021-2035)', proposing to plan a 'single comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network' for Guangxi and strive to complete the target task of 1.5 trillion yuan in comprehensive transportation construction investment during the '14th Five-Year Plan' period, providing strong support for the economic and social development of the whole region.

The recently released 'Hainan Province 14th Five-Year Plan for Comprehensive Transportation' makes clear that by 2025, the province will strive to achieve a cumulative investment of more than 220 billion yuan in transportation infrastructure construction over five years. Information from the Zhejiang Comprehensive Transportation Development 14th Five-Year Plan Industry-Enterprise Matchmaking Promotion Conference also shows that the total output of Zhejiang's comprehensive transportation industry currently exceeds 2.5 trillion yuan, and during the '14th Five-Year Plan' period, 2 trillion yuan of comprehensive transportation investment will be implemented, basically completing the three '1-hour transportation circles' at the provincial, municipal and urban levels.

Ou Guoli, director of the China Transportation Economics Research Center at Beijing Jiaotong University, said in an interview with the Economic Information Daily that this year is the initial year of building a transportation powerhouse and also the opening year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, and many places have made relatively large investments in transportation infrastructure construction, especially in some key projects. From the requirements of building a transportation powerhouse and carbon emission reduction and other aspects, railways and rail transit will remain the construction focus in many places for some time to come. For the development of some cities, especially city clusters, strengthening the integration of the four networks can improve the overall efficiency of comprehensive transportation.

'Large-scale transportation investment and construction have brought unprecedented new opportunities for the development of the comprehensive transportation industry, and this is a huge market worth trillions of yuan,' said a relevant person in charge of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Transportation. During the '14th Five-Year Plan' period, the province's investment in railways and rail transit will be at a peak, with total investment reaching 860 billion yuan, including about 600 billion yuan for civil engineering and about 260 billion yuan for electromechanical and equipment manufacturing. Together with the entire industrial chain such as R&D, operation and maintenance, the total industrial scale will exceed 1 trillion yuan. Key components, complete vehicle manufacturing, testing and experimentation will be new growth points for the rail transit industry.

One of the main tasks of Shanghai's comprehensive transportation development during the '14th Five-Year Plan' period is also to accelerate the improvement of a multi-level rail transit network. In terms of external railway corridors, Shanghai will accelerate the construction of the 'five-direction, twelve-line' trunk railway corridor layout, achieving 60-minute access from Shanghai's central city to neighboring cities and 120-minute access from major hubs to major cities in the Yangtze River Delta.

At the same time, investment in the construction of sea and air hubs is also increasing. During the '14th Five-Year Plan' period, Zhejiang, focusing on building a core strategic hub of world-class airports in the Yangtze River Delta, will accelerate the expansion and reconstruction of airports in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou and other cities, and complete Lishui and Jiaxing airports and a number of general aviation airports, with a total investment of about 75 billion yuan, more than twice the investment scale during the '13th Five-Year Plan' period.

Hainan proposes to build a first-class international aviation hub and advance a series of projects such as the new Sanya airport, with a multi-point layout during the '14th Five-Year Plan' period, striving to complete general aviation airports and takeoff and landing points covering the whole province. Shanghai has also made clear that it will consolidate and enhance the level of international sea and air hubs. Specific measures include building a world-class cruise port, advancing the Phase IV expansion of Pudong International Airport, and creating world-class aviation hub facilities.

Ou Guoli believes that the investment and construction of this transportation infrastructure will have a relatively obvious driving effect on China's economic development for some time to come.