On the morning of January 15, Shudao Railway Operation Group held its 2024 work conference. At the meeting, a comprehensive review and summary of Shudao Railway in 2023 was conducted, and specific work for 2024 was deployed and arranged.

In 2023, Sichuan's high-speed rail speed was further improved, with the Sichuan-Qinghai and Chengdu-Yibin railways successively opening to traffic

The reporter learned from the meeting that in 2023, Shudao Railway Operation Group proactively served major strategies such as building a strong transportation province and the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, made new progress in industrial coordination and resource development, and the joint-venture railway segment completed a cumulative investment of 26.865 billion yuan.

The Qingbaijiang to Zhenjiangguan section of the Sichuan-Qinghai Railway was completed and opened to traffic, helping Aba Prefecture officially enter the era of bullet trains; the province's first newly built high-speed railway with a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour—the Chengdu-Zigong section of the Chengdu-Yibin High-Speed Railway—was smoothly completed and put into operation, once again raising Sichuan's speed. The main tunnel boring of the Huayingshan Tunnel and Guangming Tunnel surpassed the milestones of 6,400 meters and 2,000 meters respectively, and all individual projects were fully launched.

At the same time, to serve the high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the group fully undertook the launch and regular operation of the "Yangtze River Block Train," completing a cumulative 33 train runs and 1,696 TEUs shipped in 2023, with an annual cumulative freight volume of 17.0948 million tons and freight turnover of 765 million ton-kilometers, among which the freight volume in March reached 1.75 million tons and the freight turnover in July reached 76.5 million ton-kilometers, both setting new historical highs for the enterprise.

In terms of dedicated line expansion, the group successively signed operation and maintenance service contracts for three railway dedicated lines: Yunlong Airport, Huaxian County in Henan, and Yibin Port. Among them, the official operation of the Huaxian County railway dedicated line in Henan marked the first breakthrough in exporting specialized services outside the province, establishing the "Shudao Special Transport" brand.

In terms of continuously improving the quality of railway logistics, based on both domestic and international markets, the group vigorously developed a logistics industry with railway transportation as its foundation, achieving annual operating revenue of 3.236 billion yuan in the railway logistics segment.

At the same time, the group continued to build multimodal transport corridors, successfully completing the (Laos-Chengdu) China-Laos special cold-chain road-rail intermodal transport test, launching China-Nepal sea-rail intermodal transport, the first China-Europe (Russia) automobile special train, Guangyuan's first China-Laos block train for ceramic tiles, and Zigong's first China-Laos block train for agricultural materials ammonium sulfate, achieving multiple first breakthroughs. The multimodal transport international block trains operated 86 runs for the year, an increase of nearly four times, and the brand effect is gradually taking shape.

In 2024, major railway corridors will accelerate again, with the Chengdu-Dazhou-Wanzhou, Chengdu-Chongqing Middle Line, and Chongqing-Xi'an railways advancing in an orderly manner

The reporter learned that in 2024, Shudao Railway Operation Group will focus on the overall requirements and annual targets for 2024, accelerate the building of a nationally first-class comprehensive railway operation service provider with efficient operations, excellent services, industrial aggregation, and doubled strength, and make new and greater contributions to the comprehensive building of a modern socialist Sichuan.

Among these, the group will accelerate the completion of the Chengdu-Zigong Railway and the Chengdu-Zigong Airport section projects, and advance in an orderly manner the investment and construction of major railway corridors such as the Chengdu-Dazhou-Wanzhou, Chengdu-Chongqing Middle Line, Chongqing-Xi'an, Chongqing-Kunming, Xi'an-Chengdu, and Sichuan-Tibet railway connecting lines. Among them, the Chengdu-Dazhou-Wanzhou High-Speed Railway will ensure completion of 13.2 billion yuan in investment in 2024 and strive to complete 13.3 billion yuan.

The group will strengthen market-oriented marketing, improve the construction of freight marketing mechanisms, flexibly and efficiently use price leverage, establish a freight transport evaluation mechanism under the "one enterprise, one policy" approach, continuously optimize market-oriented pricing strategies such as volume-price mutual guarantees for major customers and tiered pricing, and promote volume growth and efficiency creation in transport business. It will strive to form a "railway+" integrated industrial chain of production, transport, and sales with distinctive features, increase the market share of rail-water intermodal transport, and support the collection and distribution of ports and hubs inside and outside the province such as the Three Gorges Dam.

In addition, the group will manage the operation of the "Yangtze River Block Train" and the "Greater Bay Area Block Train." It will reduce logistics costs through various means such as resource exchange, industrial coordination, and supply chain management, and promote steady volume growth of block trains. It will steadily build a multimodal transport brand.

Taking the implementation of the national "carbon peaking" and "carbon neutrality" strategies as a starting point, the group will fully leverage the transport advantages of its self-operated railways and port dedicated lines, actively build an intermodal transport system for bulk materials and containerized goods, and rely on "end-to-end integrated supply chain transport services" to cultivate "rail-water" and "rail-road" intermodal transport brands. It will closely follow the "Belt and Road" initiative, promote two-way operation of international block trains such as China-Laos and China-Europe, and continuously enhance the core competitiveness of "cross-border trade + international block trains," among other initiatives.