On September 15, reporters learned from the Anhui Provincial Department of Transportation that the bidding for the Anqing Haikou Yangtze River Bridge concession project (third time) has been successfully completed, and construction is expected to begin in November. Once completed, the bridge will be the province's seventh and the upstream-most combined road-rail bridge on the Anhui section of the Yangtze River.

The project, located between Anqing City and Chizhou City, is a key transportation infrastructure for the province and will serve the national "three-in-one" function of carrying railway, expressway, and first-class highway traffic across the river. The bridge is designed as a double-deck cable-stayed road-rail structure. The upper deck will carry a six-lane (three lanes each direction) expressway with the total length of 17.5 km, of which 13.1 km is newly built. The lower deck reserves a double-track corridor for the Anqing–Jingdezhen railway in the middle, with two four-lane first-class highways on either side, totaling 9.44 km. The main span reaches 1,100 meters, ranking fifth in the world and fourth in China among bridges of the same type.

The upper-deck expressway will connect to the G4231 Nanjing–Jiujiang Expressway; the lower first-class highways will tie into G347 and G206. The reserved Anqing–Jingdezhen railway corridor could in the long term accommodate routes such as the Beijing–Hong Kong high-speed line and the Nanjing–Anqing intercity railway, forming an integrated "highway-railway–expressway" river-crossing hub. This will optimize the province’s comprehensive multi-level transport network and open a new fast corridor from the Yangtze River Delta to the middle Yangtze region for southern Anhui, northern Jiangxi and eastern Hubei, thereby promoting the implementation of the "one river, two banks, development along the river" strategy.

Source: Hefei Daily