The scene of the 2024 Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Transportation Work Conference. Image from/Inner Mongolia Department of Transportation

On January 17, the reporter learned from the 2024 Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Transportation Work Conference that this year the transportation industry will focus on major infrastructure construction, accelerate the formation of a comprehensive three-dimensional transportation layout that runs across east and west, connects north and south, links smoothly to Beijing, connects the eight provinces, reaches the border and the sea, and integrates urban and rural areas, implement 39 key highway projects with a construction scale of 2,500 kilometers, and achieve the full opening of the east-west expressway corridor of the autonomous region, expressway interconnection between leagues and cities, and expressway connection at key ports.

Gao Shiqin

Gao Shiqin, Party Secretary and Director of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Department of Transportation, said that this year efforts will be made to achieve practical results in serving the two major tasks, playing a leading role, safeguarding and improving people's livelihood, and strengthening industry governance, so as to serve and guarantee the autonomous region's efforts to blaze new trails and advance to the middle reaches through high-quality transportation development.

This year, Inner Mongolia will promote cost reduction, quality improvement and efficiency enhancement in transportation and logistics, issue opinions on the high-quality development of transportation and logistics, continue to implement the special reward and subsidy policy for online freight, integrate and optimize the allocation of transportation resources, focus on solving the problems of vehicle-cargo mismatch and high empty-running rates, cultivate local online freight market entities, and strive to integrate more than 1 million vehicles of capacity in online freight across the region, with freight volume reaching 200 million tons and output value exceeding 15 billion yuan.

Inner Mongolia will advance "trunk road-rail intermodal transport + regional green distribution," coordinate the extension of railway dedicated lines into port areas, industrial parks and factory areas, continue to promote the "road-to-rail" shift for medium- and long-distance transport of bulk goods and containers, and strive to have the railway freight turnover account for 57% of comprehensive transport by the end of this year, with the proportion of long-distance railway transport for coal mining and industrial enterprises in western Inner Mongolia exceeding 80%; taking the development of the "dry port + container + new energy heavy truck" transport model as a breakthrough, promote the opening of "green channels" for new energy container transport in mining areas, power plants, coal yards and other locations, build supporting comprehensive energy supply stations, and cultivate clean transport enterprises in the green transformation.

This year, Inner Mongolia plans to build or upgrade 5,000 kilometers of rural roads and complete 4,000 kilometers, achieving proportions of 95.5%, 88.5% and 44.6% respectively for sumu (townships) connected by third-class and above roads, relatively large natural villages connected by hardened roads, and administrative villages connected by two-lane roads; strengthen the integration of transportation with related industries, and start construction of 1,700 kilometers of industrial roads and tourism roads; implement sand prevention and greening projects along highway lines, build desert highways into green barriers for desert control, and serve the winning of the "three major landmark battles"; advance the construction of county-township-village three-level nodes for passenger, freight and postal services, and open more than 30 new routes; implement 1,000 kilometers of rural road safety life protection projects and renovate 150 old and dangerous bridges on rural roads.

In 2023, Inner Mongolia started construction of more than 10,000 kilometers of highways and completed fixed asset investment of 35.88 billion yuan in highways and waterways; started construction of 41 industrial roads totaling 476 kilometers and 24 tourism roads totaling 609 kilometers, with 79 banners (counties, cities and districts) connected by expressways, 47 outbound corridors via expressways and first-class highways, 6 ports connected by first-class and above highways, and 229 industrial parks and tourist attractions connected by second-class and above highways; completed a comprehensive transport freight volume of 2.34 billion tons and freight turnover of 553.59 billion ton-kilometers, with international road transport freight volume of 69.93 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 136%.