In 2011, 27% of the rural population of Yunnan, a mountainous area located in the southwest of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), was living below the national poverty line. The large poverty pockets were linked to inadequate road access, limited arable land, and cultural barriers to outmigration. With strong support from the central government, Yunnan had invested heavily in upgrading its transport network, allotting an amount equivalent to 10% of the provincial gross domestic product in 2011. Despite this, the trunk road network connected with or forming part of the northern and north–south transport corridors of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) remained inadequately maintained and in poor condition, with the pavement on almost half of the roads expected to soon require complete reconstruction.
To help address the situation, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved in December 2013 a loan of $80 million for the Yunnan Sustainable Road Maintenance (Sector) Project, the first ADB-funded road maintenance project set to pilot new forms of road maintenance in the province. The project was processed as a sector loan to allow the provincial government to address the rapidly changing needs of trunk road maintenance, key sector issues, and institutional constraints comprehensively. Its envisaged impact was improved access to a safe, high-quality trunk road network for the people of Yunnan; and expected outcome was improved trunk road sustainability in Yunnan.
At appraisal, the project’s planned outputs were (i) rehabilitation of about 890 kilometers (km) of trunk road pavements to good condition; (ii) introduction of a performance-based road maintenance on a pilot basis; (iii) launch of a computerized road asset management system (RAMS) in the Yunnan Highway Administration Bureau (YHAB), the government agency administering the trunk road ; and (iv) increased YHAB capacity to manage new approaches for road maintenance. It was to be implemented in four phases corresponding to the YHAB’s annual road maintenance plans for 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Comprising about 30 small-scale subprojects throughout Yunnan, the project’s completed outputs included (i) 1,070.3 km of trunk roads restored or reconstructed, (ii) 57 km of national highway and 107 km of provincial highway maintained through performance-based contracts, (iii) an operational computerized RAMS, and (iv) capacity building of the YHAB. ADB’s project completion review (PCR) mission observed that the project roads were of good quality and routine maintenance was in place and effective to keep the roads in good condition. As common practice in the PRC, the YHAB used its own workforce to carry out routine maintenance. Pilot performance-based road maintenance under the project introduced market-based delivery mechanisms, which could substantially reduce costs, to a field that does not operate in a pure market economy. As part of YHAB capacity enhancement, an Environment, Social and Safety Unit was established within the project management office and domestic staff training programs were undertaken. However, the planned overseas training program was not implemented because of prohibitions from the government.
Completed project roads significantly improved the connectivity and transport conditions in the project areas and GMS, triggering a rapid increase in traffic reaching an annual daily average of 3,445 vehicles in 2018. Implementation of the pilot performance-based road maintenance has provided the YHAB with significant experience, helping it to improve its efficiency in road maintenance. Increased efficiency of road maintenance in the province caused the proportion of good roads to reach 87% in 2018, and the safety audit confirmed that the safety risk of the trunk road network was reduced to low or medium.
The project also made a mark as the first multilateral bank-financed initiative with performance-based road maintenance pilots in the PRC, preceding the World Bank-financed Anhui Road Maintenance Innovation and Demonstration Project. It demonstrated good practice in transitioning road maintenance from pure public service to a quasi-public product, and was named by ADB as one of the Best Performing Projects in the PRC in 2016.
The project had the Yunnan Provincial Department of Transport as executing agency and the YHAB as implementing agency.
