Urban Transport of China No. 05 Citation: HAO Yuan, LI Tanfeng, XU Tiandong, LI Xin. Transportation Development in Chengdu-Chonqing City Cluster Under the Strategy of Yangtze River Economic Belt [J]. Urban Transport of China, 2019 (05): 18–23. Transportation Development in Chengdu-Chonqing City Cluster Under the |Strategy of Yangtze River Economic Belt HAO Yuan1, LI Tanfeng1, XU Tiandong2,3, LI Xin1 1. China Academy of Urban Planning & Design, Beijing 100037, China; 2. Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 201306, China; 3. University of Florida, Gainesville 32611-5706, Florida, USA Abstract: The current new development concept has new requirements for the city clusters’ transportation devel- opment. As an important city cluster among the metropolitan areas along the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Chengdu–Chongqing City Cluster possess the strongest economic strength in the western China. This paper first analyzes the three distinctive development features of Chengdu–Chongqing City Cluster: high ranking status, entire inland type, and abundant tourism resources among other things. The paper identifies three transportation is- sues—badly needed improvement on the international travel connectivity, imbalance and ineffective transportation services, and severe problems in lacking of communications among administrative offices as well as the unneces- sary internal competitions. Finally, the paper proposes five strategies of future transportation development for this city cluster: strengthening the large intra- and inter-modal terminals’ development, improving intercity railway network, enhancing the functionality of secondary terminal functionality, promoting the joint development and sharing of infrastructure facilities and policies, and supporting the transportation development in the metropolitan areas of Chengdu and Chongqing. DOI: 10.13813/j.cn11-5141/u.2019.0503-en Keywords: regional transportation; Chengdu–Chongqing City Cluster; international terminal; secondary terminal; Yangtze River Economic Belt The Yangtze River Economic Belt contains a world-class imposed requirements for the three major city clusters on city cluster in the Yangtze River Delta and several devel- the Yangtze River. He asked whether these city clusters oping city clusters, namely Middle Yangtze River City could set new goals and take new measures for differenti- Cluster, Chengdu–Chongqing City Cluster, Central Yunnan ated and coordinated development based on their location City Cluster, and Central Guizhou City Cluster. They con- conditions, resource endowments, and economic foundation stitute the core competency of the Yangtze River Economic in their own development processes, in the context of the Belt, which are important hubs and gateways for internal overall goal for a high-quality development of the Yangtze and external connections. Although these city clusters only River Economic Belt. He also asked whether the cities of all account for 45.31% of the land in the Yangtze River Eco- sizes in a city cluster could determine their development nomic Belt, they carried 70.98% of the population, 82.85% orientations and directions based on the development ori- of the GDP, 77.75% of the fixed asset investment, and entation and direction of the city cluster, and whether they 93.04% of the total utilized overseas investment in 2014. could stagger their key development directions to solve the However, the development level of the city clusters in the problem of homogeneous development. In this context, Yangtze River Economic Belt still needs to be improved. based on the special transportation study in the Land and Their international competitiveness needs to be strength- Space Planning of the Yangtze River Economic Belt spon- ened, and their regional coordination capacity needs to be sored by the Ministry of Natural Resources, this paper takes enhanced. In the symposium on the development of the the Chengdu–Chongqing City Cluster [1] in the Yangtze Yangtze River Economic Belt held on April 26, 2018, River Economic Belt as an example to discuss the trans- President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, portation development of city clusters in the new era. ______________________________________ Received: 2019-06-17 Supported by: 2017 Science and Technology Innovation Fund Project sponsored by China Academic of Urban Planning & Design (C1-2017-25); 2018 Science and Technology Project Plan sponsored by Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development (2018-R2-041) First author: HAO Yuan (1982–), female, from Baoding, Hebei Province, PhD, senior engineer, is mainly engaged in the research on urban transportation planning. E-mail: [email protected] © 2019 China Academic Journals (CD Edition) Electronic Publishing House Co., Ltd. 1 1 Development characteristics of Cheng- Chengdu–Chongqing City Cluster, the operation speeds of du–Chongqing City Cluster intercity railways (some are using national railway trunk lines) are low, especially in the northeast of the city cluster where the operation speed of intercity railways is about 1.1 Chengdu and Chongqing with extremely high 120–160 km·h−1. urban primacy in Chengdu–Chongqing City Chengdu–Chongqing area is relatively closed in trans- Cluster portation connection, with a high proportion of internal There are two megacities in Chengdu–Chongqing City trips [3]. The proportion of internal freight trips of all trans- Cluster, namely the main city of Chongqing and the main city portation modes is as high as 83%, ranking second in China, of Chengdu. The number of large cities with a population of only after Xinjiang. In terms of passenger transportation, the more than 1 million is small, while the number of medi- southwest region has the highest proportion of internal trips, um-sized cities with a population of 500,000–1,000,000 is as high as 44%. The integration of Sichuan Province and large. According to the Report on the Urban Primacy of Chongqing City is the main factor driving the increase in the Capital Cities in China issued at the end of 2018, the top proportion of internal connections. three cities that have the highest overall score are Chengdu, 1.3 Chengdu–Chongqing City Cluster with rich Hangzhou, and Wuhan, if the four centrally administered tourism resources, including plains, rivers, and municipalities, i.e., Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chong- mountains qing, are not considered. The higher urban primacy of a cap- ital city can lead to the more concentrated resources in Plains, rivers, and mountains coexist in Cheng- transportation, medical care, and education. du–Chongqing City Cluster, with sensitive ecology, rich Although Chengdu has high urban primacy, its service for tourism resources, and high requirements for ecological en- and attractiveness to the city cluster is far behind that of vironment protection. In 2017, Sichuan Province received Shanghai [2]. For example, for Kunshan in Yangtze River 670 million tourists, ranking the fourth nationwide. At pre- Delta City Cluster, Shanghai is the first choice for invest- sent, Chengdu is the main organization center of tourism in ment, living, services, population outflow, and industrial Sichuan Province, while only few main scenic spots are close chain connection. However, for Meishan in Cheng- to high-speed railway hubs. According to the big data of du–Chongqing City Cluster, Chengdu is the first choice only tourism in Sichuan Province in 2017, 2.14% of China’s for living and services, while Shanghai and Shenzhen are the tourists arrived in Sichuan Province by high-speed railways, 2.27% by aviation, 15.04% by general rails, and 80.55% by first choices for investment. Moreover, the cities in the other transportation modes (self-driving, long-distance pas- Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta are the first senger bus, etc.). choices for industrial chain connection and population out- flow. 1.2 As an inland city cluster, Chengdu–Chongqing 2 Transportation development City Cluster with a prominent characteristic of re- stricted external connections and strong internal 2.1 Chengdu and Chongqing’s functions as inter- connections national hubs to be improved Restricted by the region and terrain, the construction of With an average annual growth of more than 10 interna- high-speed railways in Southwest China is backward. For a tional routes, Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport has long time, the connection between Chengdu and the whole become the fourth largest international airport in China. Be- country mainly relies on the east–west corridor. However, the hind the rapid growth are high subsidies from local govern- design speed of the current Shanghai–Wuhan–Chengdu ex- ments. Chengdu and Chongqing are two important aviation press passenger corridor varies, and it is only 120–160 hubs in Southwest China, but their international passenger km·h−1 on the segment between Hubei Province and Chong- throughputs only accounted for 11.34% and 7.79% of their qing City. The design speeds of the high-speed railwayways total passenger throughputs in 2018, far lower than those of that are recently completed or under construction are high, Shanghai (51.86%), Beijing (26.59%), and Guangzhou but the number of high-speed railwayways with a design (24.81%) [4]. speed of more than 300 km·h−1 is still small. For example, the Since the first China–Europe train [5] was successfully Chengdu–Xi’an high-speed railwayway was open to traffic at launched in March 2011, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, the end of 2017 with a design speed of 250 km·h−1; the Suzhou, Guangzhou and other cities have successively Chongqing–Guiyang railway was open to traffic at the be- launched container trains to Europe. By the end of June 2018, ginning of 2018 with a design speed of 200 km·h−1; the Chongqing and Chengdu simultaneously became the first city Chengdu–Guiyang high-speed railwayway is under con- in China that accumulated 2,000 China–Europe train trips. struction with a design speed of 250 km·h−1. Inside Although the traffic volume of China–Europe trains grows © 2019 China Academic Journals (CD Edition) Electronic Publishing House Co., Ltd. 2 rapidly, the operation of return trains is far from ideal.