Nation to boost rail freight by 30% by 2020

China will boost its rail freight capacity by 2020 and raise the volume of goods delivered by trains by as much as 30 percent, an environment ministry official said on Thursday, as the country grapples with rising vehicle pollution.

Ding Yan, vice-director of the Vehicle Emissions Control Center under the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said trucks produce 13 times more pollution per unit of cargo than trains.

While China has been making efforts to discourage road freight, particularly in the heavily polluted Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, it still accounted for 76.8 percent of total cargo deliveries in 2017.

Though the government took action to restrict the transportation of coal by road, the share of rail in total freight volumes rose just 0.1 percentage point to 7.7 percent in 2017, Ding said in comments published by the environment ministry on Thursday.

To boost rail freight by 30 percent by the end of the decade, the government will charge higher fees and introduce more stringent monitoring procedures to try to discourage road deliveries, Ding said.