Planning for China's Future

This article reports on a comprehensive transport study of Jiangsu Province in eastern China. It is one of the fastest-growing provinces in China and has a population of 76 million. Much of the recent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) has been concentrated in the southern half of the province, and a number of new corridors have been identified to promote more growth and development. A transport model was developed to represent current traffic flows on the existing road network, using a series of links between nodes. The links were classified and assigned a value based on factors such as quality of pavement, design speeds, the presence of toll facilities, and the like. Origin-destination (O-D) surveys were carried out at 165 sites, and O-D matrices were derived. After further development, the traffic flows generated by the model were compared with data obtained from actual traffic counts, and the model was refined. Then traffic forecasting was developed analyzing historic traffic data. The analysis shows a relationship between GDP and traffic flows. An income elasticity model was also used to examine traffic growth and economic growth. The indices thus derived were compared to other similar countries. For a study period projecting to 2020, the modeling results suggest expanding the freeway network by 5,800 km of freeways. The network would have five vertical and nine horizontal routes, seven connective links, and 11 river crossings of the Yangtze. A chart shows the river crossings and the main transport corridors