China Finishes Work on Record-Breaking Bridge

Home , Hangzhou Bay Bridge, Jiaxing, Russky Bridge

Sourceable Industry News & Analysis http://sourceable.net

Author : marc-howe

The Jiaxing-Shaoxing Sea Bridge took seven years of construction work to complete and lies on a roadway connecting the city of Shaoxing, situated to the south of Hangzhou Bay, with the city of Jiaxing, located on the bay’s northern side to the south of Shanghai.

The bridge is scheduled to open to traffic by the end of June, and is expected to halve the driving time from Shaoxing, a major prefecture-level city with a population of nearly five million, to the national economic centre of Shanghai by removing the need to drive around Hangzhou Bay.

With a span of 10 kilometres, the bridge has set the record for the world’s longest and widest multi-pylon cable-stayed bridge. Its chief form of structural support is a pair of cable-towers with heights of nearly 230 metres.

The six lane bridge is designed for the exclusive use of high speed vehicles traveling at around 100 kilometres an hour. Usage by pedestrians or low-speed vehicles is prohibited.

The completion of the Jiaxing-Shaoxing Bridge means that in addition to usurping the record for the world’s biggest cable-stayed bridge from The Russky Bridge in Vladivostok, Russia, China now has a total of four entries on the top 10 list.

The bridge is also the second large-scale cable-stayed bridge to be built on Hangzhou Bay, following the completion of the six-highway Hangzhou Bay highway bridge in 2007.

The Hangzhou Bay Bridge connects Ningbo, a major city situated to the south of the bay, with Jiaxing, on the route between Ningbo and Shanghai, and has reduced the highway travel distance between the latter two cities from 400 kilometres to 280 kilometres.

The Chinese authorities opted to use cable-stayed designs when building bridges to traverse the Hangzhou Bay due to the durability and strength of the structures under adverse conditions.

Hangzhou Bay, which is situated on the Yangtze River Delta, is subject to highly hazardous conditions, including earthquakes, extremely high winds during typhoon season, and some of the strongest tidal forces on the planet.

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