A joint meeting of the executive vice governors of the three provinces in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River – Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi – was held in Hubei’s Wuhan on May 23, 2021. The meeting announced that, the three provinces will work together to get national support to the planning study of constructing a rail transit system in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The three provinces will coordinate inter-provincial layouts of high-speed railways, inter-city railways, expressways, and waterways, to accelerate building one-hour internal commuting circles in the Wuhan, Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan (CZT), Nanchang metropolitan areas, and a two-hour inter-provincial economic circle.

As the economic configuration is undergoing profound change in China, leading cities and city clusters are becoming the main repositories of development resources. The three provinces will grasp the opportunity to jointly carry out a batch of key railway projects, to establish a “Yangtze River middle reaches metropolitan area based on railways”.

The three provinces will strive to include the Yueyang-Nanchang, Jinzhou-Yueyang-Nanchang, and Changsha-Jiujiang railways into national plans; include the Xiangyang-Changde railway into national plans and accelerate its implementation; include the Ankang-Enshi-Zhangjiajie railway into national plans, following a high-speed railway standard; include the Wuhan-Guiyang, and Xiantao-Yiyang railways into national plans; and, speed up launching the construction of Changsha-Ganzhou, Changsha-Jiujiang, and Xingyi-Yongzhou-Chenzhou-Ganzhou railways.

Hunan and Hubei will work together to open a 1,811-km north-south high-grade waterway, which will connect Tangbai River, Hanjiang River, Hanjiang Canal, Yangtze River, Songxi River, Songhu River, Xiangjiang River, Xianggui Canal, and Xijiang River.

Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi will start the expansion of the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway Wuhan-Yizhang section, and the G60 Shanghai-Kunming Expressway Changfu-Liling section synchronously, and strive to complete them at the same time.
 
This article is from Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Pang Yuehui

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn