The stayed-cable bridge, linking Cixi City on
the southern bank of the bay with Jiaxing City on the northern bank, will be
built in five years.
With a designed life span of 100 years, it will have six lanes in two
directions, with a designed driving speed of 100 kilometers per hour.
Upon completion, daily traffic volume on the bridge is estimated to reach 45,000
vehicles during its first year of operation.
The bridge will shorten the journey between Shanghai
and Ningbo by 120 kilometres, making it a 179-kilometre journey, Zhejiang
Governor Lu Zushan said Sunday. "It will certainly enable each part of the
delta to develop much closer relations with one another, and greatly enhance the
area's overall economic growth,'' said Lu.
Wang Yong, chief director of the Hangzhou Bay Trans-Oceanic Bridge Construction
Command Post, said the bridge will be one of the most important not only in
China but in the world "for it is not only the longest one (over a sea) but
also will be built in the world's most complicated sea environment, with one of
the three biggest tides on Earth, the effect of typhoons and the difficult
content of the sea soil.''
That is why preparatory work started on the bridge as far back as 1994, said
Wang. During the past nine years, more than 120 technical research projects have
been carried out on the planning of the bridge, with the help of more than 700
experts from throughout the world.
The Yangtze River Delta covers an area of 100,100 square kilometres and has a
population of 135 million. It is regarded as the world's sixth-largest
metropolitan area after London and Paris. It includes the 15 most prosperous
cities in China as well as half of the country's 100 wealthiest counties.
Although the area has only 10.4 per cent of China's population, it accounted for
22.1 percent of the country's gross domestic products last year, 24.5 percent of
the country's revenues and 28.5 percent of the country's import and export
volume.
Governor Lu said: "It will be much easier for the area to jointly work on
several grand projects, such as international tourism development, the building
of world-class deep-sea ports, and so on.''
Recent schemes in the area include Shanghai's Yangshan deep-sea port, which
involves investment of 12 billion yuan (US$1.45 billion) and is scheduled to be
completed in 2005.
The development of Shanghai into an international shipping centre will also
involve Ningbo, Zhoushan and Jiangsu
Province's Taicang, which boast of some of the best deep channels in the
country.
At the northern end of the Hangzhou Bay bridge, a new industrial zone is under
construction in Jiaxing. It will cover an area of 25 square kilometres.
On the southern side, another new industrial zone with total investment of over
1.7 billion yuan (US$205 million) is also under construction.
Another bridge is being built between the island city of Zhoushan and the
mainland, costing 5.8 billion yuan (US$701 million).
Other large-scale projects being undertaken on both sides of Hangzhou Bay
involve the chemical, steel and car industries.
"All these will surely combine to make a tremendous impact on the
development of the whole delta area. A new era has arrived for the Yangtze River
Delta,'' said Lu.
Construction of the new sea-crossing bridge is an indication of China's
increasing economic power, and it is expected to boost economic development in
the Yangtze River delta.
Following the Hangzhou Bay bridge, a number of sea-crossing bridges at the Bohai
Bay, Huangdao in Shandong
Province and East China Sea will be constructed involving more than 100 billion
yuan(12.09 billion US dollars), authoritative sources have disclosed.
