Construction of a second road across the Taklimakan desert in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has entered the final stage, and its builders said on Tuesday the 424-km highway will open to traffic on Oct. 1.
The highway will link the towns of Hotan and Aral, crossing desert sands wracked by extremes of heat and cold.
The 790-million-yuan (101 million U.S. dollars) project, launched by the central government in 2005, is expected to facilitate cargo and passenger transport between the resource-rich and densely-populated Hotan city, in southern Xinjiang, and Aral, an underdeveloped new city on the northern edge of China's largest desert.
The new highway will also speed up transportation of Hotan's farm produce to Aksu, a pivotal land port, and further on to the cities of Xi'an and Lanzhou, said Li Lixin, an official in charge of the project.
The first highway across the Taklimakan, running 522 kilometers from Lunnan, in the north, to Minfeng county, in the south, was inaugurated in 1995. But vehicles bound for Aksu had to make a detour along the westernmost border of the desert.
"It took two and a half days to drive from Hotan to Aksu," said Li. "With the new road it takes 10 hours."
Mu Lati, a veteran Uygur driver, said he was happy he would finally be able to "sit still" in his truck.
"I travel a lot to Urumqi and without a road in Hotan, I had to make a big detour along the zigzag roads in the Tianshan Mountains to bypass the desert," he said. "The roads there were so bumpy that I felt I was jumping on my seat."
The Taklimakan desert is located in the center of the Tarim Basin south of the Tianshan Mountains, covering 324,000 square kilometers.
In summer, the surface temperature in the desert exceeds 80 degrees Celsius and continuous sandstorms forced road builders to suspend construction for several days last spring, said Mutielipu Kasim, director of Xinjiang's regional communications department.
He said the new road would provide easier access to the southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region as well as the neighboring countries, including Pakistan and Tajikistan.
The road is one of China's ambitious infrastructure projects to develop its remote west. The country opened the first ever railway to Tibet last July.
Source: Xinhua
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