Province to emphasize transport infrastructure

Liaoning province will put more transport infrastructure on its map and improve its transport service capacity during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), to support regional economic upgrade and transformation.

More transport facilities such as highways and railways, which connect Liaoning with other parts of China, will be built in the next five years, according to Li Jirui, deputy director of the Transportation Department of Liaoning Province.

Li said all major cities in Liaoning will have high-speed rail services by the end of 2025. All expressways that connect Liaoning with other provinces will be completed by then and all of the province's airports will have metro services.

Logistics channels in Liaoning will be further upgraded in the next five years. The province will build a first-class port cluster in the region and develop coastal city Dalian into a shipping hub for Northeast Asia.

A multimodal transport network composed of highways, railways and waterways will be developed. By the end of 2025, more than 10 percent of containers will be transported by railway and waterway using a combined logistics model, Li said.

In the next five years, smart technologies and green development concepts will also be promoted to support regional transport network construction.

Liaoning is one of 13 regions in China to have obtained approval from central authorities in 2019 to carry out pilot projects that support China's goal to build a strong transport network across the country. Reform plans have been implemented in both rural areas and the public transportation sector. A more effective mechanism is also in place to strengthen transportation safety.

Liaoning achieved outstanding results in transport network building during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20).Amid efforts to optimize the region's comprehensive transport layout, the total scale of railway network reached 6,637 kilometers, including 2,092 km of high-speed railways. The total highway length was 130,000 km, including 4,331 km of expressways.

The operation and service capacity of the transport system has also seen a significant increase over the last five years. Shenyang Taoxian International Airport and Dalian International Airport are among the busiest airports in China, with annual passenger throughput exceeding 20 million for each airport. The number of containers shipped by sea-rail combined transport has been above 1 million 20-foot equivalent units per year for three years in a row. By the end of 2020, transit cards issued by local public transport service providers could be used in a majority of cities across China.