Chongqing municipal government has vowed to speed up its road building and protection campaign. It plans to spend Rmb17.6bn this year on 20 expressway projects, completing 10, starting four and speeding up the remaining six. It has also allocated Rmb10bn to establish a citywide management system to crack down on overloading on expressways. The system, already in use in some parts of the city, stores data and is capable of analysis and automated search. Full integration will be completed by the end of 2009 to allow relevant authorities and toll stations to share data. Trucks caught overloading on three occasions would be blacklisted and information about the offending vehicles and their owners will be shared and traced to bear penalties.
In a separate development, Chongqing said it would check and renovate all the municipality’s 400km of highways at national and provincial level this year. One reason for the measure is the huge increase in traffic, said Qian Dun, head of the Chongqing Highway Bureau. A large number of overloaded vehicles and poor quality construction were additional factors, he added.