(Reporter Li Zaixing) "This road is really great and we feel like walking in the flower fields!" On August 16, Duan Lihua, a cycling enthusiast from the Xiling District, and her ten riding friends were full of praise for the beautiful scenery of Zhijiang section of the road from Zhijiang to Dangyang.
The nice road is attributed to the determination of "making breakthrough on plain tourism " and the wisdom of “building the road as scenic spots” of Zhijiang City.
There is no extraordinary sight or famous mountains and rivers in Zhijiang, so how can the tourism be vigorously developed?
There are actually many nice rural areas with beautiful landscape and tourism resources. But tourists can’t visit these places because of the poor infrastructures such as bad roads. So many research reports showed the "pain of road".
To build roads is the only way, but nobody knows what kind of road should be built.
Inspired by American country roads, decision makers put the concept of "Landscape Highway" into practice: promotion of self-driving travel by "Landscape Highway" and then promotion of rural tourism by self-driving travel.
Undoubtedly, it is also one of the effective ways to complement the disadvantage of Zhijiang tourism.
No sooner said than done. According to Du Yong, director of Zhijiang Transportation Bureau, more than 22.5 million dollars have been invested to implement hardening, greening, landscaping more than 380 rural roads; the roads have been linked and radiation capacity of arterial roads enhanced . This year, based on the building of beautiful countrysides, landscape highways have been established that match the characteristics of tourism resources, finally forming the rural road pattern of “far-reaching, circular network linking every village”.
It was said that the Zhijiang City put the ecological concepts into highway construction, and built more than 20 new “roads of beautiful scenery” including An Dong Road, Zhi Dang Road, New National Highway 318 and Xian Nv Road which reached the standard of scenic highway. We planted trees along the spacious road equipped with infrastructures like landscape lamps, tourism signs and strove to maintain the ecological status of the rural landscape, farmland, creating a nice and safe environment where visitors are able to enjoy the picturesque rural roads .