(TibetanReview.net, Jan22, 2017) – All the 535 or so townships in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) will be connected by road once an ongoing project to build roads to the last two of them in Medog (Tibetan: Metog) County is completed by 2017, reported China’s online Tibet news service eng.tibet.cn Jan 20. Medog itself became the last county in the TAR to be connected by road in 2013.
Townships are sub-county level administrative divisions, with each township being made up of clusters of villages. Large numbers of villages in Tibet still do not have road access and other basic infrastructure facilities.
The project to build roads to the townships of Jalasa (Gyalhasa) and Gade (Ganden) in Medog County of Nyingchi (Tibetan: Nyingtri) City had been initiated in 2015 and will be completed by the end of 2017, the report said.
It said complex geological conditions marked by high mountains and deep valleys meant high costs and long periods in road construction.
Medog County, with average altitude of 1200 meters and minimum altitude of 115 metres, is located in southeast Tibet, downstream of the Yarlung Tsangpo river, adjacent to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh which China claims for itself as a part of southern Tibet.
The report said the TAR government will complete investment in fixed assets of 52 billion yuan in 2017 and strive to newly build 355km of high-grade highway, leading to a total highway traffic mileage of more than 90,000km.