According
to a report
by China Daily, China has plans to build a super highway in Zhejiang Province
to ease traffic congestion by 2022.
Traveling
in a self-driving vehicle at 150 kilometers per hour along an intelligent
highway which offers automatic charging and toll-paying functionality on the go
will no longer be a sci-fi concept in China in a few years.
The super
highway, enabling increased safety and higher average traffic speeds, is
expected to break ground by 2022 in Zhejiang province, according to the
provincial transport authority quoted by the China Daily.
Equipped
with intelligent transportation systems to support autonomous vehicles, the 161km-long
super highway will connect the three relative prosperous cities of Hangzhou,
Shaoxing and Ningbo.
According
to a report
by Xinhua, the 6-lane new intelligent expressway system will incorporate a
monitoring system as well as a warning system to maintain the safety of
vehicles while increasing the average traffic speed.
The
intelligent highway system will allow vehicles to freely flow past toll booths,
which means drivers do not need to stop and charges will be automatically
billed, according to Ren Zhong, Deputy Director of Transport for Zhejiang Province.
Designed
to ease traffic congestion on the highway linking Hangzhou and Ningbo, it aims
to reduce travel time by a third to just 60 minutes.
Mr Ren
Zhong continued to share that "the ultimate goal is to realise a top speed
limit of 150 km/hr, or even eliminate speed limits, like on German highways.”
However,
Jia Xinguang, Executive Director of the China Automobile Dealers Association, commented
that to realize the goal of a 150 km/hr top speed limit is a big challenge.
Now,
expressways in China have speed limits of between 100 and 120 km/hr. However,
the average traffic speed is estimated to be at 90 km/hr due to the mixture of
various vehicle types, toll booth delays, traffic accidents and other issues.
Other
than smoothing traffic, the super highway will also have a green emphasis in
support of increasingly popular electric vehicles. The highway will be equipped
with facilities including charging piles and solar-power electricity generation
to support the emissions-free vehicles. It will also employ charge-as-you-drive
battery-charging technology that will be realized in 2022 when Hangzhou hosts
the Asian Games.
Mr
Jia Xinguang also added that the function of automatic free-flowing charging
could be promoted in the country in the future. The technology would help lower
labour costs by cutting down on toll station staff and raising vehicle capacity
of highways.
Feature image: Bjoertvedt/ CC BY-SA 4.0
