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INFRASTRUCTURES * China - New roads quickly ruined by overloaded freight trucks
China has been throwing down pavement and asphalt at a breakneck speed, and few cities are as proud of all the new roads as Chongqing, China's largest metropolis with 32 million people
Chongqing,China -The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles,CAL,USA), by Don Lee -27 April 2008: -- ... More than 6,300 miles of streets, highways and tunnels have been built in this hilly western Chinese city in the last decade. The improvements are testament to the impressive infrastructure supporting the nation's booming economy... But as fast as construction workers build the roads, the concrete and asphalt is being destroyed - carved up by a chronic assault from overloaded trucks. The result is 24-hour construction zones and trouble for the environment, the economy and the people living near the highways and byways... Along a one-mile stretch of a Yangtze River estuary here, construction workers come for weeks at a time, over and over, repaving the same road that is damaged by 60- to 120-ton trucks brimming with coal, cement and other materials... Residents of Tianming village say they are subjected to constant dust, pounding noise and traffic jams... Analysts have estimated that overloaded trucks cause direct economic losses of almost $4 billion a year, but that doesn't measure damage to the environment, lost time on traffic-congested streets and the accidents caused by or made worse by overloaded trucks... Liu Long, owner of Yu Long Transportation in Anhui province west of Shanghai, says he knows overloading is fraught with danger... "In the beginning, I strictly obeyed the load limits," said Liu, who operates 10 trucks that typically transport construction materials and other commodities. "But I found myself losing money. . . . "Everything is more expensive: oil, salary for drivers," he said. "What can I do? I cannot lift my price. I have to follow everyone else."...
Labels: infrastructures
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