Archive for the 'Hangzhou' Category

The longest sea-crossing bridge in the world is that which is extending across Hangzhou Bay. According to the Oriental Morning Post workers have placed the last reinforced girder onto the western part of the main channel of the cable-stayed bridge.

Chen Rufa, the chief engineer of the cross-sea bridge project, said, ‘The placing the last girder usually means the completion of construction of the navigation channel bridge’s main body.’

It won’t be totally finished until next June but when operating it will link Jiaxing and Ningbo cities. Thus it will shorten the distance between Shanghai and Ningbo in neighboring Zhejiang Province by 120 kilometers.

The Ningbo-Hangzhou Bay Bridge is 36-kilometers — think of it crossing the Channel at Dover — with an estimated investment of RMB14 billion.

It is much longer than those other wonders of the world, the 25.23-kilometer Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in the United States and the 25-kilometer Saudi Arabia Baharian Causeway which connects Saudi with Bahrian.

The six-lane bridge will have a speed limit of 100 kilometers-per-hour. It has been estimated that traffic will reach 45,000 vehicles a day during its first year of operation.

The bridge toll, planned to be RMB80, is now awaiting the approval of the Zhejiang government.
Source: Shanghai Daily

DHL, the express carrier and logistics provider, has a new, dedicated flight connecting Qingdao and Hangzhou with its central Asia hub in Hong Kong. The carrier has already started gateway operations at the Hangzhou International Airport. These latest investments are part of the planned $110 million investment in its China business in the next few years.

The new ten-time weekly flight, operated by a Yangtze River Express Airlines 737-300 freighter aircraft with a payload capacity of 13 tons, marks Hangzhou Airport’s first international air express cargo connection.
Source: Logistics Today

The Hangzhou Bay Bridge will, when finished, span 36 kilometres across the East China Sea. When it opens next year, it will be the longest trans-oceanic bridge in the world. If it could be moved to the straits of Dover it would link England with France.

It is costing RMB11.8 billion ($1.54) of which 70% is being put up by private sources and 30% by state agencies. They will see their investment back via tolls and lower transport costs.

By shortening the journey time from the port of Ningbo to the economic powerhouse of Shanghai by a couple of hours, the bridge will further stimulate regional growth to the tune of as much as 15% a year.

The bridge is also the last link in the motorway linking Beijing and the north to the booming eastern and southern seaboard. This is fixed asset investment. In China fixed asset investment accounts for more than 50% of the national income (against 14% in the UK) — more than any major economy anywhere in history in peacetime.
Source: The Independent

The media office of the Shanghai municipal government has denied that the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev rail line has been suspended. On the other hand it was not willing to give any information about the timetable for construction, which has yet to start, or if it would be completed in time for the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

If it is built, the line will stretch some 175 km and will carry trains running at speeds of up to 450 kph between the two cities.

The denial was something less than totally whole-hearted. An official from the Shanghai municipal reform and development commission said, ‘We know the National Development and Reform Commission approved a feasibility study on the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line in March last year, but that doesn’t mean the project will definitely be built.’

On Sunday, the Xinhua News Agency reported that the Shanghai government might shelve the construction of the line altogether. Xie Weida, a professor at the Institute of Railway & Urban Rail Transit at Tongji University, said China still lags a long way behind Germany in maglev-building technology.

He was quoted in the China Daily as saying, ‘If the maglev line is to be built, the major portions of the train will have to be imported from Germany. So far, we can only handle the construction of the rail and the train’s shell.’ Germany has said it does not want to invest in this project nor does it want to transfer key technology to China. The original report may well be true.
Source: China.org.cn