The highway being constructed to span the Taklimakan Desert, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, will be completed and put into use half a year ahead of schedule.

An official with the project section of the China Railways No.15 Bureau, the builder, said the workers had so far completed 285 km of the road bed which is now ready for asphalt. The 424-km-long highway is designed to link Aral on the northwestern fringe of the desert and Hotan in the south.

Construction of the highway, the second of its kind in the desert, began on June 1 last year. Most of the investment in the highway construction, estimated at 834 million yuan (103 million U.S. dollars), is borne by the state.

In accordance with an original construction schedule, the highway will be finished by December 2007. Upon its completion in June next year, the highway will help shorten the journey from the north of Taklimakan to its southern fringe by 400 km, and will be brought into a trunk transport network together with two other national highways No. 314 and No. 315.

Xinjiang's first desert highway, which is east to the highway being constructed, has a length of 522 kilometers. The first desert highway, also a north-south road from Lunnan to Minfeng, was opened to traffic in 1995. It is the world's longest desert highway.