The highway network is becoming increasingly dense, with "Happy Roads" connecting urban and rural areas; railway lines connect the outside and the inside, with high-speed railways covering all counties; inland waterway transport is speeding up, connecting rivers, seas and canals; port capacity is upgraded, adding new impetus to development... In the eastern part of Jiangsu Province, on the northern wing of the Yangtze River Delta, Yancheng, once known as the "Oriental Wetland and Hometown of Cranes and Deer", is now attracting more attention with its impressive transportation report cards.

As a central city in the Yangtze River Delta, coastal development and Huaihe Ecological Economic Belt, how to better promote the integrated development of national strategies and deepen two-way opening up at home and abroad is the focus of attention of Song Yong, a member of the National People's Congress and director of the Yancheng Transportation Bureau.

"Yancheng City has established the development strategy of 'focusing on highways, upgrading railways, strengthening ports, focusing on rural areas, building a high-quality comprehensive transportation service system, and creating a regional comprehensive transportation hub in the eastern coastal area.'" On March 5, Song Yong said in an interview with our reporter that Yancheng will focus on implementing the "four major projects" of comprehensive transportation network, comprehensive transportation hub, transportation service system and governance system.

"Strengthen the function of the coastal channel to the north, connect with Shanghai and southern Jiangsu to the south, improve the Huaihe River and Yanning channels to the west, and strengthen opening up to the sea to the east." According to Song Yong's description, the blueprint for building an all-round comprehensive transportation system is slowly being laid out in Yancheng.

Yancheng Port, with its "one port and four districts", is the only access to the sea in the central coastal area of ​​Jiangsu, with obvious locational advantages and prominent node role. At present, Yancheng Port has initially realized multimodal transport such as public water, river-sea, and sea-river transport, and is an important access to the sea and logistics service platform in central and northern Jiangsu. However, due to the low comprehensive level of the port and the low level of inland waterways, the development of river-sea-river transport still faces major bottlenecks.

Song Yong suggested that the comprehensive positioning of Yancheng Port should be improved at the national level to build a node hub port in the northern wing of the Yangtze River Delta; support should be provided to enhance the comprehensive capabilities of Yancheng Port, improve the navigation level of trunk waterways, and realize the connection of three-level and above waterways among coastal port areas as soon as possible to form a water transport channel heading west to the Huaihe River Basin; support the construction of the trunk waterway network in Jiangsu Province, assist in the "road to water" and "rail to water" transformation, accelerate the transformation of transportation modes, and promote the establishment of a more convenient, efficient, smarter, greener and safer river-sea-river intermodal transport system.

On December 30, 2020, the Yantong High-speed Railway was completed and opened to traffic, and the coastal corridor of the "eight vertical and eight horizontal" high-speed railway main corridor was fully opened. However, as an important link of the coastal corridor, the Lian (Yungang)-Yan (Cheng) Railway is only a passenger and freight railway with a speed of 200 kilometers per hour, which has become a bottleneck for the coastal railway to be "open but not fast".

Song Yong believes that planning and building a new high-speed railway channel along the eastern coast of Jiangsu can give full play to the function of the road network and enhance the capacity of the coastal channel; realize the separation of passengers and freight on the Yancheng to Lianyungang section, enhance the freight function of the existing Qingyan Railway, and promote the adjustment of the transportation structure; effectively resolve the contradiction of insufficient capacity of the existing Beijing-Shanghai channel and accelerate exchanges and cooperation as well as the flow of factors among cities along the line.

"The National Comprehensive Three-dimensional Transportation Network Planning Outline proposes to build an international Yangtze River Delta comprehensive transportation hub cluster, which will have a great driving effect on the construction of Yancheng Comprehensive Transportation Hub." Song Yong said that Yancheng will seize the opportunity and focus on building a higher-level transportation hub to contribute to the creation of an international Yangtze River Delta comprehensive transportation hub cluster.