On October 9, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Three-year Action Plan for Promoting Transport Structural Adjustment (2018-2020)" (hereinafter referred to as the Action Plan). Including six major parts: Railway capacity improvement, water transport system upgrade, highway freight management, multimodal transport speed, information resources integration, urban green distribution.

The Plan of Action aims to promote the transit of bulk cargo from rail to water in three years, compared with 2017.

Railway freight volume increased by 1.1 billion tons nationwide, by 30%, in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and its surrounding areas by 40%, in the Yangtze River Delta by 10%, and in the Fenwei Plain by 25%. Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are the next important areas.

The total volume of water transport and freight increased by 5 billion tons, an increase of 7.5%.

Coastal ports bulk cargo road transport volume reduced by 4.4 million tons.

The annual average freight volume of multimodal transport increased by 20%, and the volume of container rail combined transport in key ports increased by more than 10% annually.

The proportion of freight vehicle standardization has been greatly improved.

The proportion of new energy vehicles in newly added and renewed light-duty logistics distribution vehicles in urban built-up areas is over 50% and that in key areas is 80%.

By 2020, the structure of national freight transport will be obviously optimized, the volume of bulk cargo carried by railways and waterways will be significantly increased, the volume of railway collection and distribution at ports and the volume of multi-modal container transport will be greatly increased, and a breakthrough has been made in the adjustment of transport structure in key regions. Beijing Tianjin Hebei and its surrounding areas will be built as a demonstration area for transport structural adjustment.

On October 13, at the Forum on How the Freight Transport Industry Meets the Challenge of Public Transit Railways, the Director of Transport Services Department of the Ministry of Transport Yu Xingyuan gave a detailed interpretation of the above-mentioned Plan of Action.

According to the data provided by the other Directors, in 2017, China's total social freight volume of highways accounted for 78%, waterways accounted for 14.1, railway accounted for 7.8%; freight turnover of highways accounted for 48.6%, 4 percentage points higher than the United States, railway accounted for 19.6%, 10 percentage points lower than the United States, water accounted for 31.7%. At the same time, the ratio of road transportation in China is still increasing.

In 2017, China's steel output was 8.3 billion tons, basically relying on road transportation.

The unbalanced structure of the hot metal and the excessive dependence on highway transportation result in the emission of particulate matter significantly higher than that of other countries.

Yu pointed out that the highway undertook too much coal, steel, grain and other large-scale goods long-distance transport tasks, the long-distance transport of large-scale goods to the railway and water transport, which is a key point of transport restructuring. Based on this, the railway also set up a "freight forwarding action plan for -2020 in 2018".

At present, the ratio of rail to rail transport in China is only about 2%, which is generally 20-40% in Europe and America. In the long-distance transportation of bulk goods, hot metal should be the main part and highway should be connected. However, the problems of "connecting not smoothly, neighbouring not to connect" and "the last kilometer" between high-speed railway and public water are prominent.

In port enterprises, iron and steel enterprises, large-scale production enterprises, railway "last kilometer" in the port area, factory area, park can not enter, and finally through the highway refurbishment, but increased a large number of costs, resulting in a large number of cargo owners have to choose the road as the only choice.

"The last kilometer link will be a very important part of the Plan of Action," Yu said.

At the same time, he pointed out that "there are not many operators in China who can truly undertake multimodal transport operators, and can integrate multiple modes and bring into full play the overall benefits."

He cited the example of this year's management of goods vehicles. "In the past, more than 90% of the vehicles were illegal, but after treatment, we found that a large part of the transport force squeezed into the railway and water transport, in the transport system plays an important role in large enterprises such as Anji logistics, long-term logistics and China Railway Corporation. China Railway Corporation (CRC) can provide good transport capacity services for large-scale and multi-modal transport operators such as Anji Logistics and Long Term Logistics. Meanwhile, Anji Logistics and Long Term Logistics can also set up fleets to develop Ro-Ro transport.

Yu Xingyuan believes that "large-scale cargo owners and logistics enterprises are very important to the development of the following multimodal transport. Now the Ministry of Communications is also carrying out the third batch of demonstration projects of multimodal transport, hoping to cultivate those large-scale multimodal transport operators to take on the role of overall integration of transport modes."

In the "Railway Transport Capacity Promotion Action" conveyed by Director Yu, we should enhance the turnover capacity of trunk lines, promote the construction of key trunk lines, especially the Menghua, Jingyuan and Huangda trunk lines, enhance the efficiency of Wari and Hanhuang, and the "last kilometer" of Railways entering ports, gardens and factories in large industrial and mining enterprises such as coal. Carbon, steel, electrolytic aluminum, electricity, coking, automobile manufacturing and large-scale logistics park construction of railway dedicated lines as a very important aspect, the Ministry of Communications is issuing specific implementation plans. The "last mile" of the railway is an important part of railway capacity upgrading.

Secondly, in terms of service upgrading, on the one hand, we should optimize the organizational model of railway transportation, give priority to ensuring the supply of bulk materials, enrich train formation, develop various high-efficiency transportation products such as day-to-day arrival, develop multi-frequency and diversified liner products such as railway transport liner and bulk freight direct liner, and study and promote double-deck collection. At the same time, the requirements of freight, short barge fee, cancellation of connection link, quantity and price mutual insurance, contract and so on are put forward.

Railways have invested heavily in docking with large enterprises, building the capacity of trunk lines and supporting capacity of special branch lines. In February this year, the Tangshan Municipal Government and the Beijing Railway Administration signed the "Strategic Integration on Strengthening Railway Gathering and Distributing Port Transportation"