China has launched a road expansion project in Inner Mongolia in an effort to ease worsening traffic congestion on the Beijing-Tibet highway, state media reported. A 217-km stretch of the highway between Inner Mongolia’s capital, Hohhot and the city of Baotou will be widened to eight lanes from four, according to Gao Tuanshan, deputy manager of the Inner Mongolia Highway Construction and Development Corp. The expansion plan is expected to take two years to complete and will cost US$1.5 billion. A major coal-producing region, Inner Mongolia recorded a 49% increase in truck transportation over the first nine months of the year. The region’s road network made headlines earlier in the year when a 96.5-km traffic jam occurred which took several weeks to be resolved.
Categories