The 2024 Shaanxi Provincial Transportation Work Conference on site. Photo from/Shaanxi Transportation

Reporters learned from the 2024 Shaanxi Provincial Transportation Work Conference held on January 17 that this year Shaanxi will continue to make sustained efforts on building the main framework of the "rice-shaped" high-speed railway, with the national expressway main framework routes involving Shaanxi as the core, accelerate the formation of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei—Chengdu-Chongqing main axis, the Beijing-Tibet corridor, the Continental Bridge corridor, the Western Land-Sea corridor, and the Fuzhou-Yinchuan channel, continuously improve the hub capacity of the Xi'an metropolitan area as a national central city, and drive the orderly development of the three major transportation hub clusters of Guanzhong, northern Shaanxi, and southern Shaanxi, with a full-year plan to complete 70 billion yuan in comprehensive transportation investment.

Shaanxi will adhere to the approach of "focusing on key points, eliminating existing stock, emphasizing preliminary work, and strengthening maintenance," strive to achieve new breakthroughs in the construction and management of transportation infrastructure, and firmly grasp the implementation and effectiveness of the 8 major cooperation matters and 7 key safeguard measures under the ministry-province cooperation agreement; consolidate and expand the phased results of the pilot program for building a transportation powerhouse, do a good job in declaring the second batch of pilot projects, and accelerate the implementation of two pilots: transportation-agriculture integration and innovative research on toll road policies.

Centering on the "Year of High-Quality Project Advancement," Shaanxi will give full play to the role of the province's high-speed railway construction coordination and advancement mechanism, jointly advance the construction of 5 high-speed railways—Xi'an-Yan'an, Xi'an-Ankang, Xi'an-Shiyan, Chongqing-Kangding (Kangyu), and Yan'an-Yulin—with the scale of high-speed railways under construction reaching 1,010 kilometers; start construction of the Daliuta-Jinjie Expressway and the Baotou-Maoming connecting line, and the Xi'an-Yongshou section reconstruction and expansion project of the Fuzhou-Yinchuan Expressway; complete the Qujiang-Taiyigong section reconstruction and expansion of the Baotou-Maoming Expressway and the reconstruction and expansion of the Terracotta Warriors dedicated line and other projects, with the scale of expressway construction reaching 600 kilometers; arrange 70 projects for ordinary national and provincial trunk highways, with a construction scale of 1,300 kilometers and more than 150 kilometers completed and opened to traffic; strive to improve and upgrade 9,500 kilometers of rural roads, add 3,200 natural villages with more than 30 households connected by hardened roads, add 20 townships connected by third-class highways, renovate 100 dangerous and old bridges, and implement 6,000 kilometers of village road safety protection projects.

Shaanxi will deepen the construction of a comprehensive transportation system, strive to achieve new breakthroughs in the integration, intelligentization, and greening of transportation, advance with high quality the construction of Xi'an as a national comprehensive freight hub city for supplementing and strengthening the chain, promote the coordinated development of airports and land ports, and promote the construction of regional comprehensive transportation hub cities in Baoji, Yulin, Ankang, and other cities; advance the construction of a digital transportation system, orderly integrate existing business information systems, increase the density of road network traffic survey stations, and explore the construction of road-area weather stations; deeply promote the "road-to-rail" shift for bulk cargo and medium- and long-distance cargo transportation, strive to complete 410 million tons of railway freight volume, and promote the continuous adjustment and optimization of the transportation structure; continuously improve the support capacity of charging facilities along highways, strengthen the application of clean energy vehicles and vessels, and deepen the creation of demonstration projects for urban green freight distribution.

This year, Shaanxi will focus on improving passenger transport service quality, advance intermodal passenger transport, promote the development of a "single ticket system" for passenger transport, and realize "one purchase, one payment, one code for passage" in a broader range of areas; promote diversified services of "public transportation + customized travel + shared transportation," deepen the creation of transit metropolises, and improve the level of age-friendly and barrier-free travel; deepen the construction of multimodal transport demonstration projects, encourage the transformation and development of road freight, cultivate and strengthen modern logistics enterprises, advance the development of "single document" and "single container" systems for multimodal transport, and plan and lay out the Yan'an land-port-type and Ankang road-rail-water multimodal transport projects.

In 2023, Shaanxi completed 93.93 billion yuan in comprehensive transportation investment, a year-on-year increase of 14.9%, including 53.04 billion yuan in highway and waterway investment, 27.92 billion yuan in railway investment, and 12.97 billion yuan in civil aviation investment. Major breakthroughs were made in high-speed railway construction, the highway network structure was continuously optimized and upgraded, Xi'an Xianyang International Airport's international routes covered the five Central Asian countries, and the Hanjiang River's Ankang Baihe to Danjiangkou section resumed navigation after 30 years of suspension.