Alshaa League witnesses rapid development in transportation

Alshaa League – located in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region – has witnessed rapid development in its transportation, which has greatly improved regional development, according to local media reports.

Over the past decade, 45 key transportation construction projects costing a total of 56 billion yuan ($8.06 billion) have been undertaken in Alshaa.

Difficult traveling was always been a bottleneck that plagued the development of Alshaa League. A decade ago, the total highway mileage there accounted for merely 5.1 percent of the autonomous region's total, while the highway density was less than a quarter of the autonomous region's average.

But in 2012, Alshaa League made plans to boost the construction of railways, highways and civil aviation in a coordinated manner – and to speed up the construction of a three-dimensional transport network connecting north to south and connecting east to west.

In September of that year, the Beijing-Xinjiang Expressway – with a total length of 2,547 kilometers – began construction and it opened to traffic in 2017. It is known as the longest expressway across the desert.

Today, the daily traffic volume of the Inner Mongolia section of the Beijing-Xinjiang Expressway is six times what it was after its opening. It's widely said to effectively be driving the region's economic and social development, and increasing the incomes of its farmers and herdsmen.

This year, construction of the Yinchuan-Bayanhot section of the Baotou-Yinchuan High-speed Railway has begun and on completion, Alashan will be connected to the national high-speed railway network.

Since 2013, Alshaa League has built or renovated 3,312 kilometers of rural and pastoral roads and built 392 new rural and pastoral roads, with a total length of more than 6,000 km.