Work on building an expressway along the Jinsha River from Yibin, Sichuan province to Panzhihua began on October 11. [Photo: sctv.com]

Work on building an expressway along the Jinsha River from Yibin, Sichuan province to Panzhihua began on October 11, reports China.com.

It's estimated that the expressway will cost 88.6 billion yuan (USD 13.4 billion), which will be the most expensive highway in China to date. The total mileage of this expressway is 452 kilometers, making the cost per kilometer close to 200 million yuan.

According to Chen Lesheng, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Provincial Department of communications and transportation, "Because the geographical conditions around the expressway are very bad, and the expressway is located in a place where geological disasters occur frequently, all these increase the construction difficulty and the maintenance costs."

Even so, once completed, this expressway will be an important road to support poverty alleviation work, for connecting many impoverished counties and cities in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.