A total of 18 new bridges and tunnels spanning the lower Yangtze River will be built in east China's Jiangsu Province by 2020, according to a newly released urban planning document filed by local construction authorities.

According to local construction authorities, the primary goal of building the new passages is to bridge the cross-river cities to better co-ordinate development.

The six cities and 15 counties along lower Yangtze in Jiangsu make up one third of the province's population, one fourth of its total land area and half of its GDP, according to statistics from the riverside urban planning document.

"However, disparity exists between those cities separated by the river, and the northern Jiangsu has lagged behind its southern counterpart," said Wang Xuefeng, vice-director of the Urban Planning Department under the Jiangsu Bureau of Construction.

"Solving the cross-river transportation bottleneck will help the cities share resources and make them complementary to each other in their economic and social development," Wang said.

According to Wang, the new cross-river passages will link the opposite-bank cities so that they are within half an hour's drive of each other.

"Motivated by the passage plan, some southern cities like Jiangyin and Changzhou have already started building several industrial parks in their cross-river cities," Wang said.

The passages will also link the Jiangsu cities to other cities within Yangtze River Delta, including Shanghai, Wang added. The 400-kilometer leg of the lower Yangtze starts in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu, and ends at an estuary in Shanghai.

The present six bridges over the lower Yangtze (completed or under construction) include three in the Nanjing section, one bridging Yangzhou and Zhenjiang, one bridging Suzhou and Nantong and one in the Jiangyin section.

According to an evaluation, by Wang's department, by 2010, the cross-river transportation demand within Jiangsu will rise to 400,000 vehicles per day in 2010 and 750,000 vehicles per day in 2020.

"The present six bridges are far from adequate, and we definitely need more new passages to meet the demand," Wang said.

However, some experts are calling for an end to the bridge building craze, arguing that the mushroom bridge building across the Yangtze, China's longest river, has significantly impacted waterway transportation on the river.

Wang said related bureaus would monitor the bridge building to guarantee cargo ships have enough headroom to pass.

(China Daily June 22, 2006)