The Heilongjiang Bridge, the first cross-border highway between China and Russia, opened to traffic on June 10, marking operation of a new international transport channel between Northeast China and the Russian Far East. On the same day, the Heihe Highway Port also went into operation.
Construction of the bridge started at the end of 2016 and the main body was completed on May 31, 2019. The section in China was delivered on Nov 28, 2019.
The bridge has a length of 1,284 meters and is the first steel-concrete superposed beam extradosed cable-stayed bridge in the high-altitude and cold region of North China.
To adress the extremely cold weather, the bridge was built with special steel materials that were first developed and adopted in construction in China.
China Railway Hi-Tech Industry Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China Railway Group Limited, was responsible for manufacturing and installation of the steel structures of the bridge section in China.
The bridge is a key section of the 19.9-kilometer cross-border highway project that starts from Heihe in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province and terminates at Blagoveshchensk in Russia. The project has a total investment of 2.47 billion yuan ($369.02 million).
The project is expected to help realize connectivity between several Chinese and Russian cities, which is of great significance in building a China-Russia cross-border economic cooperation zone, speeding up formation of an all-round open pattern for China-Russia cooperation and meeting the increasing economic and trade demands of the two countries.
A view of the Heilongjiang Bridge, the first China-Russia cross-border highway bridge [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
(Executive editor: Wang Ruoting)