Rural infrastructure to be improved

The Ministry of Transport vowed on Thursday to improve public transportation infrastructure in 2015, especially in rural and remote areas.

The year of 2015 will witness 200,000-kilometer-long roads and 800 ports in rural areas constructed or renovated, as well as 3,000 dangerous bridges along trunk lines and roads in rural regions refurbished.

About 100 bridges will also be built to replace zip lines that are concentrated in Southwest China's Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, covering more than 950,000 local residents. The construction project is expected to cost 2.8 billion yuan ($448 million), 80 percent of which will be funded by the central government, Wang Tai, deputy head of road department at the ministry, told a Thursday press conference.

To facilitate public transportation across different cities, the integration of metro card system will be launched in 2015 in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River economic zone, covering more than 20 cities.

A common IC card is expected to be used between Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province in 2017 for various vehicles. Fares of buses, taxis, public bicycles, urban rail transit and long-distance passenger buses will be paid with one integrated metro card.

It constitutes a part of the synergetic development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which is a national strategy put forward by President Xi Jinping last February.