Sanya to invest $1.9b in transportation projects

The Lingshui Tufu Bay to Sanya Haitang Bay section of Hainan Tourist Ring Highway. [Photo/Sanya Daily]

Since 2012, the Sanya municipal transport department has completed 38 high-grade highway, municipal road and station projects with a planned investment of 13.5 billion yuan ($1.9 billion). To date, 1.19 billion yuan has been invested.

In recent years, Sanya has positioned itself as a national comprehensive transportation hub, an airport-type national logistics hub carrier city and the core of a modern, convenient, efficient, green and economical comprehensive transportation system. By focusing on system and mechanism innovations and key projects, the regional center construction of Sanya and the Sanya economic cycle have been promoted to build the city into a new benchmark of the Hainan Free Trade Port.

As of the end of 2019, Sanya had built one 4E civil aviation hub -- Sanya Phoenix International Airport -- that has a 3,400-meter airport runway and a terminal covering an area of 10,700 square meters. In 2019, there were 204 air routes in operation, reaching out to 123 cities. A total of 123,000 planes took off and landed in Sanya that year, bringing 20.16 million passengers to the city.

Currently, there are 18 port terminals with operation qualifications in Sanya. One of them is Phoenix Island International Cruise Port, which had berthing for 80,000 metric tons with a passenger throughput of 90,000 people in 2019.

As of the end of 2020, the total highway mileage in Sanya reached 1,985.4 kilometers. Now, there are three provincial "beautiful village" demonstrable lines in Sanya. As of the end of 2021, the total highway mileage of rural roads in Sanya reached 1,711.46 km.

At the moment, the railway mileage in Sanya totals 155 kilometers, including a 59 km-long West Ring freight line. Five railway passenger stations -- Sanya Station, Phoenix Airport Station, Yazhou Station, Yalong Bay Station and Nanshan Bei Station -- have been built, with total passenger traffic reaching seven million per year.

Effective investment in Sanya's logistics industry continues to grow rapidly, and the continuous improvement of logistics infrastructure construction is being promoted. Sanya's Nanshan Freight Port Comprehensive Logistics Base is equipped with 10,000-ton general berthing for bulk cargo and a 3,000-ton ro-ro terminal. Three out of five planned agricultural product logistics centers have been built, with an area of 576 mu (38.4 hectares).

Furthermore, Sanya will focus on promoting a new pattern of green low-carbon integrated development. Passenger transport hub stations will be built, modern freight logistics facilities will be developed, and the promotion and application of new energy and clean energy vehicles will be enhanced.

To promote the integrated development of the city, the layout of a tourism highway network is being established to build a smart transportation integrated big data platform and an integrated management and control platform, so as to realize a model of "transportation+tourism+information" and lead to upgrading and development of smart tourism cities.