The Construction of Pingtan Section of the Pingtan Cross-Strait Rail-Road Bridge in Fujian Completed

At about 10:00 am on July 17, at the construction site of highway beams for the navigation opening bridge of the Pingtan Cross-Strait Rail-Road Bridge across the Beidongkou Fairway, the concrete rigid beams for the last opening of the bridge were successfully closed after more than 5 hours of concreting. This also marked the completion of road and rail beam erection for the Pingtan section of the navigation opening bridge. For the closure, the construction workers prepared more than 20 days in advance to avoid the cloudy and rainy weather, and completed it ahead of the landing of Tropical Storm Danas, the 5th tropical storm of the year, buying time for the subsequent project progress.

It is understood that the Pingtan Strait features rough seas over which there is more than one third of the time each year unsuitable for outdoor working at heights because of highly corrosive environment. Therefore, the navigation opening bridge across the Beidongkou Fairway is structured with high-performance concrete, with the corrosion resistance that can last for nearly one hundred years, which will significantly reduce the maintenance cost when it is open to traffic.

Spanning 16.34 kilometers, the Pingtan Cross-Strait Rail-Road Bridge connects Changle District with the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone in Fujian. The upper layer of the bridge is designed with a two-way six-lane highway for vehicles running at a possible speed of 100 kilometers per hour, while the lower layer is with a double-track railway with a designed speed of 200 kilometers per hour. It is the extension of the Hefei-Fuzhou Railway and a part and parcel of the Beijing-Taipei Expressway.

In the days to come, the workers will carry out constructions of, for example, anti-collision walls, wind barriers and bridge decks on the Pingtan section of the bridge. What's more, the bridge consists of 4 navigation opening bridges, among which 3 have now been closed and the remaining navigation opening bridge across the Guyumen Fairway is scheduled to be closed at the end of September this year. The whole bridge is also planned to be completed in October this year.