At the end of 2023, a China-Europe freight train fully loaded with 110 TEUs departed from Guiyang International Land Port in Guizhou Province, heading for the European continent. Along the Silk Road Economic Belt, the "steel camel caravans" continuously carry Guizhou goods from the mountains to the world.

From "peaks reaching the sky, where even birds cannot pass" to "a great road out of Guizhou, connecting the world." In recent years, Guizhou has pursued coordinated development anchored on railways, highways, aviation, and water transport, seized national strategic opportunities to expand opening-up, and helped broaden the path of high-quality development across the province.

"In 2024, we will focus on coordinating new urbanization and comprehensive rural revitalization, coordinating high-quality development and high-level security, continue to promote effective improvement in the quality and reasonable growth in the quantity of transportation, and ensure completion of more than 80 billion yuan in fixed-asset investment in highways and water transport," said Qiu Zhenguo, Party Secretary and Director of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Transportation, at the provincial transportation work conference held days ago.

Expanding the "passenger station +" business formats

Not long ago, Mr. Yang, a Jinsha native who had not been home for three years, marveled at the expressway built right to his doorstep: "So fast! It only takes one hour from Guiyang to home." With the opening of the expressway from Guiyang via Jinsha to Gulin (the Guizhou-Sichuan border), travel time from Guiyang to Jinsha county seat has been shortened from 2 hours to 1 hour. This expressway is also part of the fastest route from Guiyang to Chengdu, Sichuan.

Highways connect the city at one end and the countryside at the other. In 2024, Guizhou will serve and advance new urbanization, focus on implementing the "Strong Provincial Capital" action, accelerate construction of projects such as the Wudang-Changshun and Guiyang-Huangping expressway extension sections, and strive to start construction of the Guiyang ring expressway capacity expansion project. It will support Zunyi in building a provincial sub-center, complete the two expressways from Jinsha via Renhuai to Tongzi and from Tongzi to Xinpu, and form a Zunyi metropolitan area expressway ring.

In accelerating county-level transportation integration, Guizhou will vigorously develop customized passenger transport, guide passenger transport enterprises to adopt measures such as customized services, smaller vehicles, and regionalized operations to improve operating efficiency; optimize rural passenger transport operating models, encourage passenger transport and ride-hailing enterprises to explore new cooperation models such as "ride-hailing + scheduled bus" and "ride-hailing + passenger transport"; accelerate the transformation and development of bus stations, expand multi-format operations such as "passenger station + tourism, postal express, logistics, charging," and build "one station, multiple functions" integrated stations.

Accelerating the building of a transportation digital "brain"

In 2023, Guizhou continued to deepen pilot construction of smart transportation, launched construction of a transportation digital "brain," brought the number of provincial transportation science and technology innovation platforms to 27, won 2 science and technology awards at provincial and ministerial level or above, and issued 26 standards and guidelines.

"At present, Guizhou's transportation infrastructure still has many shortcomings, the road network layout needs optimization, and the top-level design and scenario-based application of smart transportation are insufficient. We must regard adherence to high-quality development as the absolute principle, act promptly once we are sure, do as much as we can, and transform transportation advantages into development advantages," Qiu Zhenguo said.

In 2024, Guizhou will focus on advancing green and smart transportation construction, with green highways accounting for 100% of newly built expressway projects, new energy vehicles accounting for 100% of newly added and updated city buses, the digitization rate of important transportation infrastructure exceeding 58%, and the application rate of BeiDou terminals in key areas reaching more than 84%.

Guizhou will issue a top-level design plan for digital transportation and accelerate construction of an integrated transportation digital control service platform and a transportation digital "brain"; build a unified public service platform and optimize and integrate business systems such as "12328," "Sunshine Rescue," transport administration services, and online ticketing; build 16 charging facilities on ordinary national and provincial roads, and encourage rural passenger transport vehicles to use new energy vehicles and driving training institutions to use new energy or clean energy vehicles.

Plan to complete renovation of 200 dangerous and old bridges

Solidly carrying out seven special rectifications including major accident hazard investigation, tourist chartered buses, and ride-hailing vehicles; completing refined safety facility improvements on 1,000 kilometers of expressways and 800 kilometers of ordinary national and provincial roads; building a provincial platform for long-span bridge monitoring systems and completing monitoring system construction for 126 single bridges... In 2023, Guizhou's safety and emergency support level reached a new stage.

In 2024, Guizhou will further strengthen intrinsic safety, striving to complete refined safety facility improvements on 900 kilometers of expressways and 500 kilometers of ordinary national and provincial roads; complete one year ahead of schedule the remaining 3,750 kilometers of rural road safety projects under the 14th Five-Year Plan, complete renovation of 200 dangerous and old rural road bridges, and achieve 100% coverage of "Safe Construction Sites."

In strengthening maintenance of transportation infrastructure, Guizhou will coordinate work on highway safety projects, refined safety facility improvement projects, renovation of dangerous and old bridges, treatment of hidden dangers in bridges and tunnels, geological disaster prevention, and ferry crossing upgrades; continue to explore diversified guarantee mechanisms for rural road maintenance funds and steadily carry out the special pilot work of "rural road disaster insurance" under the Transportation Powerhouse initiative.

To continuously improve the level of traffic safety operation management, Guizhou will solidly carry out the three-year action for tackling root causes in work safety, strengthen risk prevention and hidden danger investigation and rectification in key areas such as "two passenger and one hazardous" transport, ride-hailing vehicles, urban rail transit, heavy-duty trucks, and high-risk construction operations; improve the emergency response plan system for transportation emergencies, strengthen extreme weather prevention and emergency response, and enhance disaster prevention and mitigation capabilities.