New expressway to link Guizhou and Sichuan

A new expressway project linking Southwest China's Guizhou and Sichuan provinces is set to be launched, Guiyang Evening News reported Dec 11.

The expressway, starting from Guanshanhu district in Guizhou and ending at Gulin county in Sichuan, is a key transport construction project in Guizhou's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). 

With a length of 160 kilometers, the design speed of the expressway is 100 kilometer per hour. The two-way six-lane expressway is expected to cost 32.49 billion yuan ($4.64 billion).

Construction of the Guiyang-Jinsha-Gulin Expressway will start in 2020 and it will open to traffic in 2022. It will become a part of the fastest expressway connecting the two provinces' capitals, Guiyang and Chengdu. It will greatly accelerate the mutual development of the central Guizhou and Chengdu-Chongqing economic zones.

According to a five-year action plan, Guizhou province will invest more than 500 billion yuan in constructing expressways and take their total length to 10,000 km by 2022.

Zhao Yandi contributed to this story