Recently, there has been heavy news in the field of transportation infrastructure in Gansu Province - the S31 Jingning Qin'an Expressway has officially launched public bidding. The total investment of the project is as high as 4.6 billion yuan, and the total length of the route is about 82 kilometers. The main line adopts the standard of a two-way four lane expressway, with a design speed of 80 kilometers per hour and a planned construction period of 3 years. As a key transportation hub project connecting Jingning County in Pingliang City and Qin'an County in Tianshui City, the promotion of this project will not only reshape the transportation pattern of the southeastern region of Gansu, but also build a "fast lane" for the high-quality development of the local economy and society.

It is reported that the S31 Jingning Qin'an Expressway is located in the ecological protection and high-quality development area of Liupanshan. The route connects the economic core areas of Jingning and Qin'an counties, covering multiple towns and characteristic industrial bases along the way. The project construction will focus on overcoming construction difficulties such as complex terrain and diverse geological conditions in mountainous areas, while simultaneously supporting the construction of ancillary projects such as interchanges, service areas, emergency rescue facilities, etc., including multiple bridges, tunnels, and separated interchanges. The technical standards and construction requirements will strictly comply with the new industry norms of "green highways" and "smart highways".

From the perspective of regional development strategy, this project is an important node for Gansu Province to implement the "Transportation Power" construction outline and improve the "Eight Verticals and Eight Horizontals" expressway network. It is also a key measure to solve the "transportation bottleneck" in the southeastern region of Gansu. Currently, although Jingning and Qin'an are geographically close, their transportation mainly relies on provincial roads and county township roads, which have low efficiency and high transportation costs, seriously restricting the coordination of characteristic industries, integration of cultural and tourism resources, and two-way population flow. After the completion of the project, the travel time between the two places will be reduced from 2.5 hours to within 1 hour, forming a "one hour economic circle". This will not only greatly improve the accessibility of the regional road network, but also open up the "mountain passage" for characteristic agricultural products such as Jingning apples and Qin'an peaches, activate the potential for coordinated development of cultural and tourism resources such as Guatai Mountain and Dadiwan Site, and promote the formation of a new pattern of integrated development of "transportation+industry+cultural and tourism".

At the industry trend level, project construction is deeply in line with the current development direction of "green, low-carbon, intelligent and efficient" in the infrastructure field. The bidding announcement clearly requires construction units to adopt energy-saving and environmentally friendly construction technologies, promote the use of low-carbon building materials, and synchronously plan and construct modern facilities such as charging stations and smart transportation monitoring systems in service areas, in order to help achieve the goal of "carbon peak and carbon neutrality". In addition, the project will also drive the demand for upstream and downstream industries such as cement and steel, and is expected to create thousands of direct and indirect job opportunities, injecting short-term growth momentum into the local economy and laying the foundation for long-term industrial upgrading.

This bidding covers multiple core sections such as roadbed engineering, pavement engineering, bridge and culvert engineering, tunnel engineering, and electromechanical engineering, attracting many enterprises with first-class qualifications for highway engineering construction general contracting from across the country to participate in the competition. The bidding party strictly sets the bidding qualification threshold, focusing on the performance and strength of enterprises in mountainous highway construction, green construction, safety production, etc., to ensure the quality and efficiency of project construction. Industry insiders analyze that the construction of the S31 Jingning Qin'an Expressway will provide replicable and promotable experience for subsequent transportation infrastructure projects in the southeastern region of Gansu, further improving the transportation artery in the northwest region and helping Gansu Province integrate into the coordinated development pattern of the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration and the Lanxi urban agglomeration.Editor/Bian Wenjun