BEIJING, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) – China aims to raise multimodal freight volume by 20 percent and rail-water joint freight volume by 10 percent in three years from 2018 to 2020, said Wang Xiuchun, vice head of Transport Service Department of Ministry of Transport on the sixth China multimodal transport cooperation and development conference earlier this week.
The Ministry of Transport has forumulated a 3-year action plan in promoting transport structure adjustment in China, according to which, national rail freight volume is intended to grow by 1.1 billion tonnes or 30 percent and waterway freight volume by 500 million tonnes or 7.5 percent in 2018-2020, and the multimodal freight volume will reach 3.2 billion tonnes by 2020, making up 6 percent of the national freight volume.
In 2017, goods transported via multimodal transport in China, amounted to 1.368 billion tonnes, taking up merely 2.9 percent of the national freight volume, according to data publicized on the conference organized by China Communications and Transportation Association (CCTA).
The proportion of multimodal freight volume in China is very low even when it is raised to six percent by 2020, and there are many deeply-rooted problems in developing multimodal transport in China, said Wang.
Wang pointed out, there is imbalance between different transport modes of the country, traditional logistics channel layout is too homogeneous, and the comprehensive transport capacity is not strong enough to support economic expansion.
Wang said an action to improve railway freight capacity will be carried out nationwide between 2018 and 2010, in a bid to have more than 80 percent of industrial and mining enterprises with an annual bulk cargo freight above 1.5 million tonnes and newly-build logistics parks as well connected with railways by 2020.
Meanwhile, construction of railways linking to goods distribution ports will be vigorously propelled and the proportion of ports with direct railway links will be largely improved by 2020, according to Wang.
By the end of 2019, efforts will be made to strive to realize exchange and share of railway-waterway joint transport information at key coastal ports and main ports along the Yangtze River.
Multimodal transport, referring to transportation of goods under a single contract but via at least two different modes of transport such as by road, rail or waterway, is one highly efficient way mainly transporting container goods. (Edited by Duan Jing, duanjing@xinhua.org)
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