Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Railway Bridge hits key tower milestone

China’s Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Railway Bridge has marked a new milestone, with the first main tower topped out on January 16, as reported by CGTN.

This is reported by the railway transport news portal Railway Supply.

The bridge is described as the world’s longest cross-sea high-speed railway bridge currently under construction, and it is expected to strengthen connectivity and development in the Yangtze River Delta.

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Built solely for rail traffic, the crossing will run for 29.2 kilometres, a figure also cited in a Xinhua photo report. The build is expected to be completed in 2027, with the bridge intended to improve links across the delta region.

Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Railway Bridge designed for 350km/h trains

The Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Railway Bridge is being designed for 350km/h high-speed trains. It is separate from the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, which opened in 2008 as a road crossing for cars and other vehicles and is around 35.7 kilometres long. By contrast, the new structure is being built upstream of the road bridge and is for rail traffic only.

Part of the Nantong–Suzhou–Jiaxing–Ningbo high-speed railway

The bridge forms part of the Nantong–Suzhou–Jiaxing–Ningbo high-speed railway, a major corridor intended to better connect cities across the Yangtze River Delta, as outlined in an overview published by CCCC Ltd. The project has been described as a £1.2bn build. Project officials said total investment in the bridge has reached 11.2 billion yuan (about 1.61 billion U.S. dollars), and that 75% of the work has been completed.

The bridge is expected to be fully connected by September this year. The wider project is set to be operational by the end of 2027.

Precision work in harsh offshore conditions

Attention has also focused on the No. 8 tower, where the column includes lower, middle and upper sections and two cross beams. A project technical director described the precision-control requirements as being like “millimetre-level carving in the sky.”

Those challenges sit alongside difficult offshore conditions. To support safe, high-quality and efficient construction, teams have used innovations such as large dual-wall steel cofferdams and high-precision synchronous placement technologies, which project representatives said help create a stable “land platform” at sea.

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