1、1Urban Transport Planning of Shangqiu City with the “Construction of Strategic Support in Eastern ZhAbstract. Located in eastern Henan with crucial regional advantages, Shangqiu has stepped into a stage of strategic opportunities for rapid development in recent years, showing substantial potential f
2、or the construction of strategic support in eastern Zhongyuan Economic Zone. However, the urban transport status is quite unsatisfactory: with supply-demand imbalance in urban transport, the level of traffic service increasingly declines; due to poor road conditions and in adaption to the developmen
3、t of motorization, the quality of urban environment increasingly degrades; problems increasingly emerges, such as the inadequate sufficient utilization of transport resources, the insufficient construction of public facilities, the unreasonable transport mode and structure, etc. It is imperative to
4、conduct a rational planning from aspects including road network system, transport mode, static traffic system and so on, to accelerate the construction of strategic support in eastern Zhongyuan Economic Zone and to promote the sustainable development of urban economy in Shangqiu. 2Key words: Zhongyu
5、an Economic Zone; strategy in the east; urban transport planning 1. Introduction In the course of the rise of central China and construction of Zhongyuan Economic Zone, the strategic support in the east becomes constantly prominent. As Shangqiu is located in eastern Henan, as a juncture of Henan, Sh
6、andong, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, a link point between developed industrial area in eastern China and resource-rich area in western China as well as an intersection of Eurasia Land Bridge Economic Zone and Beijing-Kowloon Economic Zone, it is the bridgehead for the implementation of “head east an
7、d lead west” strategy in Henan, which occupies the significant geographical advantages and material-distribution advantages, known as the “portal of eastern Henan”. Being an important transportation hub in China Railway and highway as a whole, Shangqiu is provided with extremely crucial regional adv
8、antages and gradually holds a critical status in the strategy in eastern Zhongyuan Economic Zone. Even though the overall level of economic development in Shangqiu is moderate, the development is swift, and especially in recent years, it has stepped into a stage of strategic opportunities for rapid
9、development as a city with huge 3potential. The trend of urbanization and the construction of strategic support in eastern Zhongyuan Economic Zone have driven Shangqiu into a highly developed period. During the citys economic development, urban transport is the arteries and veins of citys survival a
10、nd operation, which is the basic industry having comprehensive and guiding influence on the national economy and social development. Whereas, in the wake of economic development, increase of residents income, limitation of traditional urban transport planning methods and imperfection of concepts, a
11、series of traffic problems have risen: with rapid growth of traffic demands, the supply-demand imbalance in urban transport results in traffic jams, which leads to the increasing decline of traffic service level; the rapid growth of motor vehicles exacerbates air pollution and noise hazard; transpor
12、t resources are not in full use; the large land occupation causes the shortage of land resources; the road landscape is quite unsatisfactory, which all have formed a vicious circle of transport development, restricting the citys economic development. To ensure a reasonable, orderly and sustainable d
13、evelopment of urban transport, rational planning must be formulated based on the interactions between the intrinsic mechanism of urban transport system and 4the external environment conditions, which may provide guarantees for the urban transport construction and management, further improve the imag
14、e and quality of the city and play a critical role in promoting sustainable development of the citys economy. 2. Actualities of urban transport in Shangqiu 2.1 Road pattern Double-loop structure surrounded by developed commercial area near train station has been formed for the roads in urban centers
15、, which respectively includes the inner ring composed of Qingnian Road, Changzheng Road, Wenhua Road and Guide Road, and the second ring composed of Pingyuan Road, Nanjing Road, Zhongzhou Road and Jianshe Road. In addition, several primary east-west and north-south trunk roads have been established
16、in the urban centers, basically forming the road framework. Currently, there are 7 east-west arterial roads including Jianshe Road, Shengli Road, Minzhu Road, Tuanjie Road, Wenhua Road, Nanjing Road and Beihai Road; 6 north-south arterial roads including Pingyuan Road, Changzheng Road, Kaixuan Road,
17、 Shenhuo Avenue, Guide Road and Zhongzhou road, in a six-vertical seven-horizontal network structure. At present, the total length of urban roads in Shangqiu is 5211 km, in which, the length of arterial roads is 74.3 km, accounting for 35.2% of the total length of roads, with the width of boundary l
18、ines of roads as 40 - 68 meters; the length of secondary trunk roads is 60.4 km, accounting for 28.6%, with the density of trunk road network as 2.0 km/km2; the length of branch roads is 76.3 km, accounting for 36.2%, with the density of branch road network as 1.13 km/km2. The per capita road level
19、in urban built-up area is 12.9, with the road area rate of 12.5%. Besides, the framework of outer ring in urban road system has also been basically formed. 2.2 Static facilities Shangqiu in recent years was the rapid growth of vehicles. Currently there are 122,383 motor vehicles, while the correspon
20、ding parking lots grow slowly, and most of existing ones are for units, passenger stations or freight stations.Shangqiu lacks static transport facilities and parking space. Many commercial centers in Shangqiu town have not taken the construction of large parking lots into consideration. Especially m
21、arkets along the roads lack unified planning and have no parking space, therefore, cars, tricycles, scooters; bicycles are parked in disorder, even occupying the road, bringing accident potential. 6Some small and medium-sized transfer hub is lack of effective indicative marks, causing the taxi manag
22、ement confusion and pedestrian organization chaos. In addition, pay little attention to the bus bicycle transfer; there is no bicycle packing lot in the majority of bus station. 2.3 Public transportation By the end of 2010, Shangqiu has 32 bus lines, with length of 371 kilometers, 650 public transpo
23、rt vehicles, of which the possess rate of 10,000 people is 6.4 sets, and 1 bus parking lot. In 2010, the passenger traffic volume is 45 million person-times, and the revenue length is 25 million km. The indicators are low. 2.4 Transportation means composition in current Shangqiu As a middle-sized an
24、d small city, Shangqius land space planning has a big difference with that of large cities, and residents transportation means also have their own characteristics. Generally speaking, the residents use bicycle, motorcycle and walk for a short-distance travel. As for travel within the city, walking i
25、s accounted for 11%, motorcycle for 21%, bicycle for 48%, cars for 10% and public transportation for 10%. The public transportations proportion is low in daily travelling, while it dominates in long distance travel. 7It illustrates that the urban transport system is not perfect, on the other hand, d
26、emand characters for the various transportation means are: economy, continuity, independence, speed, comfort, safety, and etc., while different transportation means could meet different travel needs. 3. Existing problems in urban traffic of Shangqiu city 3.1 Advance construction of urban trunk roads
27、, the desired adjustment of structure The “grid” urban road layout has been basically formed, but the proportion of secondary main roads and branches is low, especially in developed business areas and old town. The deficiency of branch network limits the overall function of the road network. The ide
28、al road network of pyramidal proportional structure has not yet been formed. At the same time, as the urban expansion and functional layout adjustment, the problems in existing urban road network structure emerge gradually, in need of readjustment with the city development, such as, the cross-border
29、 links in urban areas increase pressure on urban traffic, gradually becoming internal roads; cross-border links and urban internal traffic mixed together, affecting the urban peoples work and life. The railway barrier between the north part and east part is a great barrier for its city development.
30、8The southern part of city has abundant land reserves and relatively fewer constraint conditions, the enormous driving effect brought by the relocation of government will make the developmental center of city move to south, while the original road network structure is failed to better integration of
31、 old town and new town. The width of original planned red-line trunk road is 40 - 68 m, secondary trunk road 25 - 35 meters, the branch 10 - 22 m. The planned branchs width is narrow overall, therefore it is difficult to adapt to the expansion of city size, population gathering and travel motorizati
32、on, meanwhile there exist a large number of non-motor vehicles, it is unable to effectively arrange green strips and green belts on both sides after arrangement of motor and bicycle lane on road section, and formation of city landscape is limited. From a development perspective, the red line indexes
33、 standard of planned roads shall be raised in order to adapt rapid enlargement of city size and mechanization. 3.2 Many deformity intersections in urban main roads There are many complex intersections and staggered intersections in the city, such as, the intersection of Zhongzhou road and 310 Nation
34、al Road next to Jingjiu Bus Station; 6 roads intersect here; this intersection is also the 9crossing of urban main road and external highway. The mixed traffic tools create more confusion for traffic organization. 3.3 Poor road conditions except for main trunk roads, not adapt to the development of
35、motorization The travel structure given priority to bicycle is transferring to motorization and privatization, consistent with overall motorization growth trend brought by national economic growth. The citys motor vehicle ownership reached 122,383, of which the proportion of private vehicles is high
36、. It reflects that the economic development brings strong motorized travel tendency and great pressure on city roads and parking facilities. In addition to the main roads, most roads are of poor condition, not able to adapt the development of motorization. In the period of low motorization, urban mo
37、tor transports mainly are motor tricycles and a few small cars, with small vehicle type, slow speed, transport volume; with low requirements for road; all can pass through the roads in the city; however, when entering the motorized period, with the development of economy, the proportion of freight c
38、ars is more and more large; the speed of the vehicle is fast, the vehicle size is big, transport volume is large, therefore, requirements 10for roads shall be increased. The previous roads in the city are unable to meet the demand; the bridges of roads are also a bottleneck, the vehicles are difficu
39、lt to pass through. The increase of speed breaks previous rhythm and increase traffic risk; the previous road is difficult to load the increase of transport volume, for it may cause serous damages. 3.4 The bus development is slow and the transportation structure is irrational Shangqiu currently has
40、650 buses, among which the possession rate of buses per 100,000 people is only 6.4, still with a large gap from the national standard of 10 buses/10,000 people, and the bus lines are only 32, far from the travel needs. The slow development of public transportation, short buses number, low public tra
41、nsportation network density, small scope scale of area covered by buses and low bus service frequency and other factors make the overall level of bus transit service in the centre of Shangqiu city and lose ground in competition with the cheap and convenient individual traffic. While minibus and taxi become the backbone of motorized travel in urban passenger transport, there is very high possession rate of taxi in Shangqiu, and 3200 taxis make the per capita ratio amazing, which reflects the growth of the economic level
