Public transportation prioritized during Five-Year Plan

Taicang in East China's Jiangsu province will promote the development of its transportation system and strive to create a demonstration model in the Yangtze River Delta area by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, officials said.

The container throughput of Taicang Port hit a record high of 8 million 20-foot equivalent units in 2022 and the cargo throughput surpassed 266 million metric tons, up 13.7 and 7 percent year-on-year respectively.

The container throughput has been ranked first in Jiangsu province for five years and its national ranking has remained stable at eighth place.

The port has been actively expanding the service channels for international business. Its routes now cover 24 major ports including those in Japan, South Korea, Russia, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

With a large number of routes and high-quality service, it has become a high-profile port along the Yangtze River. Its routes now covers 27 major ports along the river, 23 key ports in inland rivers and 17 major coastal ports in China.

Taicang is strengthening its connection with Shanghai by constructing itself into a high-standard port-type national logistics hub. To better serve the empty container transfer in local and Yangtze River regions, it launched the Taicang Port branch of the Shanghai Port Empty Container.

The port also maintains close cooperation with the Yangtze River and inland ports to consolidate its advantageous position as a hub for river-sea intermodal transportation.

The Shanghai-Taicang Port Alliance, with the aim to transfer land transportation to water transportation, completed 110,000 TEUs during the year, and the amount of containers transported by the two ports in a linked manner exceeded 1.5 million TEUs.

The pace of sea-rail intermodal transportation is also accelerating. By making full use of its route resources and customized rail-water intermodal logistics solutions, the port has become a new channel for Suzhou and its surrounding enterprises to transport living materials and industrial materials.

A new channel has been opened to the key cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. With service points covering 34 locations across 16 provinces, including Yiwu, Jinhua, Shenzhen, Lhasa and Nanning, the port has become a key hub for the transportation of goods such as auto parts, pulp and other daily necessities.

With its advantages as a hub, the Taicang port area is tapping into high-end equipment, advanced materials, healthcare, and modern trade. In 2022, a total of 34 key industrial projects were launched in the area, including new energy automobiles, compressors, automotive parts and nanometer materials.

In February 2022, the Taicang Station of the Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou Intercity Railway began its construction. Once the project is completed, the commuting time from Taicang to the center regions of Shanghai will be half an hour.

In recent years, Taicang has seized the opportunities of the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta and the Shanghai Hongqiao international hub, focusing on building a comprehensive transportation network with highways as the foundation, railways as the supplement, and waterways as a linkage.

"Sitting by the river and facing Shanghai, the junction of the Yangtze River and the sea, Taicang boasts a unique location. Taicang has seized the opportunities created by railway transit and infrastructure construction," said Xu Qin, head of Taicang's transportation bureau.

Thanks to the transport network, the convergence of people, goods, capital and information has accelerated, giving rise to a large amount of commerce, consumption and service demands while greatly improving Taicang's comprehensive capacity. This has played a powerful role in driving the city's development, officials said.

In the future, with the construction of more high-speed railways, Taicang is becoming a railway hub in southeast Jiangsu, which will constantly shorten the journeys to other cities in the Yangtze River Delta region and also the country,

The flow of people, logistics, capital and information has accelerated together, resulting in a large number of trade, consumption and service demands, officials said.