China is set to open the world’s highest bridge after just three-and-a-half years of construction – the same amount of time it is taking Britain to build a new motorway overpass near Manchester.
The Huajiang Canyon Bridge, which was started in 2022, will soar twice the height of London’s Shard above the river in the country’s rugged south-western province of Guizhou when it opens next month.
The rapid construction is all the more impressive compared to Britain’s sluggish pace. The National Highways has required the same amount of time as China to build a new motorway overpass above the M67 near Manchester.
In Denton, on the outskirts of Manchester, work began on replacing the St Anne’s Road bridge over the M67 a year later, in January 2023.
The estimated completion date for the £23m project, which spans the six lanes of five-mile-long M67, is “sometime in 2026”.
China’s bridge, which will rise 625 metres above the Beipan River canyon, will dramatically eclipse the existing record of 343 metres, held by the Millau Viaduct in France.
At almost 1.8 miles long and 0.86 miles wide, it is also setting a record as the longest distance between two towers of any bridge built in a mountainous area.
A colourful flotilla of 96 trucks weighing almost 3,000 tonnes rolled across the bridge last week in a final test of the structure’s strength. That almost brings to a close a 2.1bn-renminbi (£217m) construction project that only got going in January 2022 – an impressive pace even by Chinese standards.
“In other parts of the world, a project of this scale would typically take five to 10 years from groundbreaking to completion, depending on environmental, political, and logistical factors,” Calgary University professor Mamdouh El-Badry said.
Britain’s National Highways has stressed the complexity of its own overpass project. China’s bridge is in untouched countryside, whereas the UK agency is trying to demolish and rebuild a bridge without too much disruption to traffic and local residents.
It also points out that the existing bridge, which it had to demolish, carried gas, electricity and water pipelines that had to be diverted to ensure nearby households were still supplied.
Chinese press reports credited the Huajiang Bridge’s rapid completion to the high-tech design software, the modular and prefabricated construction techniques, and the use of drones and sensors to check on the structure’s integrity.
The bridge itself has not seemed to draw public controversy but it forms part of a motorway project that has upset environmental groups by ripping large V-shaped fissures through the limestone karst landscape.
Environmentalists reportedly said the explosive, drilling and excavation techniques – used to allow the road to pass through, rather than over, the peaks – could have caused landslides, erosion and habitat loss.
However, China’s Guizhou region would be familiar with projects of this kind: almost half the world’s 100 tallest bridges are in this province.
But this one has been particularly feted in state media. It will not only reduce an hour-long drive across the canyon to just 90 seconds, but will also double as a tourist attraction, with a glass walkway, bungee jumping, paragliding and rope-swinging.
China also holds other bridge-building records. The Danyang-Kunshan Bridge is the world’s longest, at a mind-boggling 102.4 miles. It opened in 2010 and took just four years to build.
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