A bridge described by Chinese state media as the world’s highest will open to traffic on Sunday in the mountainous southwestern province of Guizhou.
The suspension bridge, which took three years to build, crosses the Huajiang Grand Canyon and is intended to cut travel times across the gorge from two hours to just a few minutes, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Guizhou is already home to almost half the world’s 100 tallest bridges, and the latest project rises 625m (2,050ft) from the river below to its bridge deck.
This is about the same height as mainland China’s tallest skyscraper, the Shanghai Tower, and around 60m higher than the previous record holder, the Duge Bridge, which is about 200km (120 miles) away.
In crossing the Huajiang Grand Canyon – known as the “Earth’s crack” due to its incredibly deep and narrow gorge – the bridge is also set to become the longest mountain bridge in the world, with a total length of 2,890m.
Its main span is 1,420m – 10m longer than Britain’s Humber Bridge, which was the world’s longest single-span suspension bridge until 1998 – according to the website highestbridges.com.
The main bridge is assembled from 93 steel truss sections weighing around 22,000 tonnes, three times the weight of the Eiffel Tower, according to China’s Science and Technology Daily.
The bridge spans the Beipan River, which is already crossed by two of the world’s tallest bridges. As well as the Duge Bridge on the border with Yunnan, which opened in 2016 and which the BBC once described as “China’s impossible engineering feat,” there is also the 366-metre Beipanjiang Guanxing Bridge built in 2003.
Technological advances in recent years have helped reduce the time it takes to build such bridges, according to Science and Technology Daily, which said the new bridge used technology such as Doppler lidar detection, BeiDou dynamic positioning, digital assembly and intelligent transport.
Zhang Yin, the director of the Guizhou provincial transport department, told a press conference on Wednesday that to build the bridge, engineers had needed to overcome challenges such as strong winds in the canyon and complex geological conditions.
He added that the project had secured 21 authorised patents, and some of its technical advances – including in areas such as wind-resistant design and high-altitude construction – had been incorporated into national standards for future construction projects.
According to highestbridges.com, Guizhou is on course to have more than 1,000 bridges with a height of more than 100m by 2030.
Of the 50 tallest bridges in the world – those with heights in excess of 300m – only three are located outside China. - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
