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Highway
Jiangsu’s highways cover all cities of the province. Under most circumstances, the highway does not mean expressway and a toll is sometimes charged. Speed limit of highways is 80 km/h but you see cars passing with a higher speed than that. Signposting system is in general good.
Jiangsu’s highways follow the nationalwide regulations that are graded into G-Series (presenting National-leve highways), S-Series (presenting Provincial-level highways), and X-Series (presenting City-level highways). For example, G318. represents the National Highway 318. There are three numbering systems:
000 Series: China National Highways point to five specific vertical routes and seven specific horizontal routes. Routes ending with "0" are north-south (vertical) direction and routes ending with "5" are east-west (horizontal) direction, such as China National Highway G055: presenting Shanghai - Chengdu, 2,970 km, horizontal direction. Nanjing is one of cities that the highway connects. The second example, the China National Highway G045: Lianyungang-Hu'erguosi (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), 3,980 km.
100 Series: China National Highways spread out from Beijing (exception: G112), such a104: Beijing – Fuzhou (Fujian Province), 2,387 km. Xuzhou and Nanjing are two of the cities in Jiangsu that the highway links.
200 Series: China National Highways form routes from north China to south China, such as China National Highway 204: Yantai (Shandong Province) - Shanghai, 1,019 km.
300 Series: China National Highways form route connections from west to east of China, such as China National Highway 310: Lianyungang (Jiangsu) - Tianshui (Gansu Province), 1,395 km, China National Highway 311: Xuzhou (Jiangsu) - Xixia (Henan Province), 738 km, China National Highway 327: Heze (Shandong province) - Lianyungang (Jiangsu), 421 km, China National Highway 328: Nanjing (Jiangsu) - Hai'an (Jiangsu), 295 km.
In Jiangsu, the most important national highways include Highway G045, Highway G204, Highways of 310, 311, 327, and 295.
Nanjing’s road transportation
Nanjing is a road transportation hub and there are four national roads (No. 104, No. 204, No.312, No.328) and 9 provincial roads connecting the city with other Jiangsu’s cities and its neighbor provincial cities:
Expressways (Freeway)
Jiangsu has totally more than 3,000 km of expressway mileage until October, 2006, and the most important expressways include Huning Expressway (Shanghai-Nanjing), Nanjing-Huai’an-Lianyungang Expressway and Lianyungang-Yancheng-Nantong Expressway. Speed limit is from 100 km/h to 120 km/h and minimum speed limit is 70 km/h.
Only motor vehicles are allowed to enter expressways. Expressway signage is posted in most roads both in Chinese and English. Signposting system for distances, intersections, service/refreshment areas, directions, and exits is similar with ones used in United States, Canada, and Japan. Jiangsu Province follows all of those regulations.
Almost all expressways charge tolls and tolls are roughly around 0.5 Yuan/kilometer, ranging between 0.3-0.7 Yuan/kilometer. Cheaper expressways do not necessarily mean poorer roads or a greater risk of traffic jam. At present, cash is only being accepted. Driving on these expressways, you may be surprised that there is less traffic congestion on these new and well-signposted expressways in comparison with expressways in North America or Europe. This is not because vehicles are rare luxuries for Chinese people right now but because the heavy and frequent toll charges blocks the popular use of these routes.
To solve traffic delay caused by insufficient tollgates at a toll station, the standing committee of Jiangsu Province has announced new rules toll charges in earlier of 2007. Any delay at a toll station due to insufficient toll gates opened to vehicles with a 10 vehicle or 200 meter waiting line-up, the route management company should let the vehicle pass the station free of charge or opens its all booths.
Jiangsu intends to invest more money on upgrading its existing roadways and highway/expressway network, and has planned several new projects including the Nanjing Yangtze River Underground Tunnel and Nantong Yangtze River Bridge, which will be the longest bridge over the Yangtze River. Both cross-river tunnel and bridge will greatly improve the provincial land transportation.
Jiangsu’s expressway network mainly includes 4 horizontal expressway lines, 4 vertical expressway lines, and 4 connection expressway lines as below at the present time:
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