news>>China highways director explains his building program past, present and future

Seminar presentation by UC Berkeley Alumnus, Jianfei Zhang, director General, china department of highways (Go to Selected Bridge Photos From his powerpoint.)

Jianfei Zhang (at left), Director General of the China Department of Highways, and a Ph.D. alumnus of the UC Berkeley Transportation Engineering program, offered succinct advice to the audience of students and faculty at a special meeting of the Weekly Transportation Seminar hosted by ITS and TRANSOC on Nov. 15, 2005. At the end of his talk, "Highway Development in China," Zhang responded to a question about the difficulties in managing such a monumental task by saying, "Plan courageously, implement cautiously."

The building of China's highway system is indeed a large task. In 1990, the government committed to building a 35,000-km National Trunk Highway System by 2020, which would provide major links to the capital of Beijing, tie together the major economic regions in the east with one another and build roads to the far west. Scheduled to be completed in 2007, 13 years ahead of schedule, that project has been followed by an 85,000-km National Expressway Network, expected to be finished in 20 to 30 years, as well as a Rural Road Development Program, which was started in 2003 and has resulted in some 132,000 km of roads being paved each year, a pace that is projected to continue through 2010.

Bridging Economic Gaps with Roads

A key element of the highway development plan is to lessen the gaps in economic growth between the crowded, more prosperous population centers occupying the eastern 50 percent of the country's land mass and those in the western half. The disparity in density and access is shown by the fact that 90 percent of the country's population occupies the eastern 50 percent. The severe topography and weather in the western regions are challenging. Zhang noted that the average elevation in the far western portion of the country is 5,000 meters, so the soil is permanently frozen. When it is paved with blacktop, the resulting absorption of heat causes the soil to melt, which undermines the pavement.

Although China's land area is roughly equivalent to that of the U.S., its huge population, more than four times that of the U.S., and its rapid economic growth have placed huge new demands on transportation systems.

Freight shipments are rising steadily. The number of containers shipped has risen 30 percent a year for each of the past 10 years, Zhang noted.

Although the vehicle fleet, some 28 million vehicles in 2004, is still much smaller than the U.S.'s, it has nearly tripled in the last 10 years, and vehicle production is speeding up. While it took eight years to add 1 million vehicles to the fleet at the start of the 10-year period, it most recently took less than one year to add another 1.3 million.

The National Expressway Network will have about the same number of freeway miles as the U.S. Interstate system.  It is designed to create links among transportation hubs, politically significant locales like provincial capitals, ports that cater to foreign trade, domestic trading points, airports, railroads and other key economic and political regions. It will connect all 300 plus Chinese cities with populations of 200,000 or more, using 34 routes, seven radius roads from Beijing, nine longitudinal and eighteen latitudinal.

Spectacular Bridges

Currently, 29 percent of the network has been built, and 20 percent is under construction; the remaining 50-plus percent still needs to be planned. Spending is at roughly $18 billion a year, and will drop to $12 to $15 billion after 2010. Included in this massive road-building undertaking are numerous challenging and spectacular bridges, whose length, design and engineering challenges make China home to the majority of the top-ranked structures in the world.

Zhang described the challenges as multi-tiered: convincing the public that these projects are worthwhile, finding a sustainable way to finance them without over-reliance on tolls, avoiding damage to infrastructure from overloading as the number of vehicles soars, ensuring the new roads are durable and built to consistent and high standards, and satisfying environmental and economic concerns.

—Phyllis Orrick, Publications Manager, Institute of Transportation Studies