China's first heavy-load expressway in service
China's first heavy-haul expressway has opened to traffic in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, improving the transportation capacity for the resource-abundant region.
The 265 km expressway linking the coal-rich Jungar Banner with Xinghe County was completed and opened to traffic on Thursday. It can be used by trucks with a load of 100 tonnes.
With an investment of 15 billion yuan (about 2.5 billion U.S.dollars), the expressway is expected to carry 150 million tonnes of traffic annually.
Its opening will help Inner Mongolia, one of the nation's biggest coal production bases, with an output of 1 billion tonnes in 2012, to improve coal transportation capacity.
