Guangxi Transportation

In the 21st century, Guangxi has convenient transportation in air, water and land, which forms a giant transportation net and provides lots of transportation routes. In China, infrastructure construction is of top priority, especially transportation construction, and numerous roads, highway, railway, and airports are built, which mostly improve the conditions for transportation, and encourage people’s going out. For passengers, there are train, car and bus in land transportation, and boat in water transportation, and plane in air transportation for their choice. Land transportation and water transportation is more convenient than water transportation, whether in cost or in time.

Land Transportation

Every city in Guangxi has a complete and convenient net for land transportation.  So far, the total length of highways in service reaches 1411 kilometers, and it will amount to 5353 kilometers, which forms a transportation net of four vertical lines and six horizontal lines, and links every city in Guangxi. Highway makes driving from one city to another faster and safer, and provides great convenience for short-distance business trip and across-city work.  In the future, there will be 13 cross-province highways, with 5 highways going to Guangdong province and four highways going to ports in Vietnam, and those highways largely enrich land transportation and provide convenience for tourism and economic development.

Railway as a transportation for carrying large number of passengers, is much valued, and am emphasis is put on the development of railway. In the last more than ten years, Guangxi has been provided conditions for railway construction: the total length of railway has been increased a lot and the railway station is more modern and convenient. New train types has been made and put into service,  and the speed of train has been increased for several times.

There are several train types: high speed train(Gaotie), high speed bullet train(dongche), direct express(zhida), express trains(tekuai), and fast trains(kuaiche), and temporary train. Speed of high speed train and high speed bullet train is the fastest, and seats of train of this two types are divided into first class, second class and business class. Seats of other trains are divided into hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper, and soft sleeper. In Guangxi, high speed bullet train has been highly developed, and operation of high speed bullet train in every city is one of the top work to department of transportation. For several years’ effort, 12 out of 14 cities have put high speed bullet train to service until 2017, and the last two city will operate it in the future. For traveling across city in Guangxi, high speed bullet train is cheer pick, because it is fast, cheap and comfortable.

In Guangxi, great efforts have been put in public transportation for several years, it will go on in the future.  Due to those efforts, every city has a complete and well-run public transportation of long-distance bus across  cities and shuttle bus within a city. Every city has at least one long distance bus station which has lines going to other cities within province.  A system for shuttle bus within a city is much more complex and has lots of lines to carry passengers. Every line has many stops for passengers to get on and get off. The ticket price is 2 yuan, and it has 10 percent off if bus card is used. The old people over 65 years old enjoys free ticket, if they have a bus card for the old only. The subway system in Guangxi is still in development, and only one city has operated subway, with two lines in service. Considering the economic development and city population, subway system in Guangxi is far behind that in first-tier city, like Shanghai.

Air transportation

Air transportation is the fastest transportation, and in Guangxi, there are seven airports: Nanning Wuxu international airport, Guilin Liangjiang international airport, Hechi Jinchengjiang airport, Liuzhou Bailian airport, Baise Bama airport, Wuzhou Changzhoudao airport, and Beihai Fucheng airport. Those airports have domestic airlines to major cities in China, including Taibei, Hongkong, Macao, and the two international airports have international airlines to neighboring countries, like Japan, South Korean, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia,  Singapore, Laos, and Burma. The first two airports are bigger than the rest, in scale, airlines and passenger throughput, and they have international airlines to countries in southeast Asia, mostly due to its geographic position: Guangxi is the south of China, adjacent to Vietnam, and it is one of the closest province to south of Asia.  With the development of economy, passenger output has been in an increasing tend in recent years. Associated facilities in airports has been improved, which makes plane-taking more convenient. Fuel charge in most domestic airlines has been canceled, which lowers the price of air ticket. All those actions increase the possibility of airplane-taking.

Water transportation

Water transportation is usually used for cargo transport and sightseeing. It is the least popular way of travelling for its obvious disadvantages, but it is very important in long-distance cargo transport, especially in international cargo transport. Guangxi is abundant with water resource, and has lots of rivers, with Pearl River as the biggest river which is also called Hongshui river or Xijiang river, and 85 percent of Guangxi is covered by the Pearl River system. The south of Guangxi borders on South China Sea, and Guangxi has several coastal cities and a coastline about 1500 kilometers. This natural resource gives much help to port operation.

Guangxi has several big ports, Fangchenggang port, Beihai port, Qinzhou port,  Wuzhou port, Nanning port, Guigang port, and Liuzhou port. Fangchenggang port, Beihai port and Qinzhou port, are deep-water coastal ports, having business with lots of ports home and abroad. The rest ports are inland ports, and Wuzhou port is the biggest inland port in Guangxi, having a name as water portal. Those ports have been operated for more than twenty years, and some of them have ship course for transport and cargo, and all of they have busy course and business.