On the morning of June 18, in the container operation area of Maoping Port, Zigui County, 128 TEU maize containers were transported from Baiyang Port by automobile, and sent to Chongqing and Sichuan by waterway again on board of the "Minren" cargo ship, thus opening the prelude of emergency transshipment of containers in the Three Gorges Area by "waterway-highway-waterway" crossing the dam.

　　"This is an effective attempt to solve the problem that restricts the ability of the Yangtze River shipping." According to Deng Jun, chairman of Yichang Construction and Investment Group, the data of transportation department show that at present, the average annual volume of containers passing through the Three Gorges Dam is about 900 thousand standard boxes, which accounts for only 10% of the logistics volume passing through the dam, but its value can reach 50% of the total value of goods passing the dam. Therefore, it is important to build a golden economic belt with smoother traffic and improve the efficiency of container cargo passing the dam.

　　To this end, Yichang Construction and Investment Group started the transfer of container to cross the Three Gorges Dam by "waterway-highway-waterway". In terms of the operation mode, the container cargo is first berthed at the Maoping Port upstream of the Three Gorges Dam or the downstream Baiyang Port and assembled, and then transported to the port through a 100-kilometer short road such as the expressway and the Yangtze River Bridge. Lastly, the container cargo is transported to an upstream or downstream destination after completion of the loading operation. The “waterway-highway-waterway” mode has reduced the one-way time of the container crossing the dam from the past three days to more than 24 hours.

　　In order to ensure the implementation of container transfer of crossing the dam, Yichang has accelerated the construction of two major ports, Baiyang Port and Maoping Port, providing hardware support for containers crossing the dam. Among them, the six berths of Baiyang Port finished in Phase I officially opened in August 2018, and the seven berths in the second phase and the Harbor Railway Project are accelerating; the three berths of Maoping Port have completed the container transformation. In addition, the Customs Supervision Zone of Baiyang-Maoping combined port has passed the Wuhan Customs inspection and acceptance. Based on this, every year, 200,000 standard boxes of cargo can be transported by containers every year crossing the dam by "waterway-highway-waterway".

　　In terms of logistics costs, although the way that containers crossing the dam has increased the logistics cost by "waterway-highway-waterway" in comparison with the traditional method, it is still attractive due to the improvement of comprehensive benefits. According to Yan Qingsong, deputy manager of the sales department of COFCO Trading (Dalian) Container Company, this model provides guarantee for goods with higher time requirements. At the same time, it has accelerated the turnover of corporate funds to a certain extent.

　　In June last year, Yichang made arrangements for speeding up the construction of the Three Gorges dam transport system. After one year of continuous construction and operation exploration, the emergency transshipment of containers crossing the dam of commercial vehicles and containers by "waterway-highway-waterway" has been launched, which is a useful exploration to speed up the construction of the Three Gorges dam transportation system and solve the problem of restricting the ability of the Yangtze River shipping.(Reporter: Lei Pengcheng; Correspondent: Wu Yan)