CHONGQING, CHINA — China has been throwing down pavement and asphalt at a breakneck speed, and few cities are as proud of all the new roads as Chongqing, China's largest metropolis with 32 million people.
More than 6,300 miles of streets, highways and tunnels have been built in this hilly western Chinese city in the last decade -- enough to get from Los Angeles to Juneau, Alaska, and back. The improvements are testament to the impressive infrastructure supporting the nation's booming economy.
But as fast as construction workers build the roads, the concrete and asphalt is being destroyed -- carved up by a chronic assault from overloaded trucks. The result is 24-hour construction zones and trouble for the environment, the economy and the people living near the highways and byways.
Along a one-mile stretch of a Yangtze River estuary here, construction workers come for weeks at a time, over and over, repaving the same road that is damaged by 60- to 120-ton trucks brimming with coal, cement and other materials.
Residents of Tianming village say they are subjected to constant dust, pounding noise and traffic jams. Recently, a 70-year-old woman was hit by a truck and sent to a hospital.
"It's no use complaining," said Zhou Dingjie, 34, a farmer who has lived in this otherwise scenic area all his life. This has been going on for five years, he said. "The government knows the trucks are overloaded, but they want to keep the economy developing. And the trucks want to make more profit."
The vast majority of trucks on Chinese roads carry loads exceeding regulations, transportation experts say. Some trucking companies admit they are violating rules but say everybody is doing it. Among the reasons: cutthroat competition, surging fuel prices and expensive highway tolls, some of which are imposed illegally by local governments.
The government has set up more monitoring stations on expressways and increased patrols. But "officials haven't taken full resolve to eradicate this problem," said Liu Binglian, director of the Traffic Economic Institute at Nankai University in Tianjin. The government's focus has been limited to certain regions, he said, and traffic bureaus can't assess penalties exceeding about $140 -- not enough to deter scofflaws.
"China's road system, which the government invested so much money into, is breaking down fast," Liu said. "Chinese roads last only one-fifth or even one-eighth of a normal lifespan."
