China’s trunk north-south expressway reopened

BEIJING—The Beijing-Zhuhai Expressway, a major north-south trunk road blocked for many days by snow, was fully reopened Monday morning, but travellers were warned of traffic jams, the Ministry of Communications said Monday.
The last 6,000 vehicles trapped by snow were relieved by 9:00 a.m. after days of hard work by 1,200 soldiers and the People’s Armed Police, said the ministry. Live broadcasts on road traffic by the China National Radio reminded drivers to “foster the spirit of cooperation” and give way to electrical repair vehicles and vehicles loaded with power coal and disaster relief materials.
The expressway has been closed and re-opened repeatedly over the past week due to unusual freezing weather in central and southern China. Many drivers had been stranded in the south-bound section of the road for more than a week. Chen Erqun of Zhengzhou in the central Henan province, said he had been on the congested section of road for more than nine days. As heavy fog shrouded parts of south China affected by the worst winter weather in 50 years on Monday morning, there were warnings that traffic woes caused by snow and frost may worsen.
Visibility was less than 100 meters in parts of Chongqing Municipality and the provinces of Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guizhou, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said. Meanwhile, a new wave of snow, rain and sleet is likely to hit parts of central and south China on Monday and Tuesday, including Chongqing and the provinces of Hubei, Henan, Yunnan and Guizhou, the CMA warned. Traffic updates from the Ministry of Communications said that the entry to the Xiangtan-Leiyang section of Beijing-Zhuhai expressway had been temporarily closed because of fog. Vehicles were not encouraged to enter the Leiyang-Yizhang section as traffic was moving slowly. The Ministry said that expressways were running well except for the closings of some sections in Anhui, Jiangsu and Jiangxi due to thick fog and icing. For the sake of safety, some icy expressways in Shanghai, Guangdong, Guizhou and Fujian were also partly closed to ease congestion.
It said that traffic on ordinary national highways was easing on the whole, but still nine icy highways in Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Guizhou and Jiangxi provinces were sealed off. With the respite of snow and frost in most parts of central and southern China, the railway transportation system has reason to be hopeful that the worst of the crisis may be over, said the Ministry of Railways (MOR) on Monday afternoon. A MOR statement said that transport on the southern section of the Beijing-Guangzhou railway was gradually recovering.
Approximately 800,000 migrant workers rushing home for family gatherings during the Spring Festival holiday that will start on Wednesday had been trapped in the Guangzhou Railway Station by Jan. 30 after persistent blizzard, the severest in five decades for southern and central China, paralyzed the north-to-south trunk line. A total of 239 trains ran along the the pivotal rail line on Sunday, with no detours being reported. Railway stations in Guangzhou saw 192 train arrivals and 191 departures the same day, handling an aggregate traffic of 452,000 people. Also on the recovery is the Huaihua-Guiyang section of the north-to-west trunk line between Shanghai and Kunming, the provincial capital of southwestern Yunnan Province. With another 587 interim passenger trains put in to service, China’s total railway passenger traffic hit 4.06 million on Sunday, up three percent or 130,000 from the previous day. The daily traffic in Shenyang, Shanghai, Kunming, Lanzhou and Urumqi surged by more than 20 percent.
It’s not clear how many trains and people remain stranded in stations. But the Ministry pledged on Feb. 1 to relieve all passengers trapped within five days. To ease power coal shortage hindering industrial production and resulting in scattered power outage, the ministry loaded 42,493 contain trucks with power coal on Sunday, the third record high in three days.
The line between Datong in coal-producing province of Shanxi and Qinhuangdao, a port city in Hebei Province, a railway which is exclusively used for heavily-loaded coal transport trains, also set a new daily freight record of 1.2 million tons.—Xinhua