Jiuzhaigou Ends Era Without Expressway Access

On the 29th, the G8513 Jiuzhaigou-Mianyang Expressway, built over nine years, was officially opened to traffic. The drive from the World Natural Heritage site Jiuzhaigou to Chengdu, a central city in western China, has been shortened from 8 hours to 4 hours. This is the first expressway leading to Jiuzhaigou. It also ends the history of no expressway access in Pingwu and Beichuan counties in Mianyang, Sichuan, becoming a major corridor connecting Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai, and Xinjiang.

The Jiuzhaigou-Mianyang Expressway is 245.809 kilometers long, built to a dual four-lane standard with a design speed of 80 km/h. It comprises 131 mainline bridges and 45 tunnels, with the bridge-tunnel ratio reaching 82.15%. As the only typical demonstration project of the Ministry of Transport's Green Highway in Sichuan Province, the expressway adhered during its design phase to the principles of "maximum protection, minimum damage, and maximum restoration." It employed "tunnels instead of roads, bridges instead of roads" to avoid massive cutting and filling, reduce land occupation, and strive to "gently place" the expressway into the natural environment.

The full opening of the Jiuzhaigou-Mianyang Expressway ushers Jiuzhaigou into a "dual-high-speed" era of high-speed rail and expressways, making travel more convenient and safer. Guo Xiaomin, Deputy Director of the Jiuzhaigou Administration Bureau, reported that local tourist arrivals have shown rapid growth in recent years. From January 1 to September 26, 2025, the Jiuzhaigou Scenic Area received 5.075 million tourists, a year-on-year increase of 26.81%; it received 296,000 inbound tourists, a year-on-year increase of 52.51%.

Furthermore, the Jiuzhaigou-Mianyang Expressway will connect the abundant tourism resources of northwestern Sichuan. The areas along the route feature beautiful ecological environments and a long history of human culture, enabling a shift in the tourism model from "single-site tourism" to "all-for-one tourism."