New Expressway in Landlocked West China Mountains OperationalPeople living in the landlocked Daba Mountains in western China's Sichuan Province now have more traffic facilities to the outside with Friday's opening of a 37.4 km expressway, the first highway in the hilly area.Construction of the road was started three years ago in order to link the area up with state trunk lines in western China. It has been evaluated as a high-quality highway by the provincial communications department. The operational section is only the first part of a 220 km highway designed to link Dazhou City with neighboring Chongqing Municipality. The construction in Sichuan Province will extend the road by 40 km this year and 88 km next year. Dazhou was a revolutionary base before the founding of New China in 1949. The previous transportation bottleneck, however, was a major barrier to its economic growth in the new era of economic reform. Some 3.8 billion yuan (about 457 million US dollars) has been injected into road building in the city over the past six years, and resulted in 2,980 km of roads. So far, 80 percent of all the mountain villages have access to road traffic. |
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