Offshore survey ends for cross-sea rail bridge

China has completed an offshore survey for a cross-sea high-speed railway bridge in Zhejiang province that will become the world's longest such bridge upon completion.

The 29.2-kilometer Hangzhou Bay bridge, with a designed speed of 350 km per hour, will be part of the railway line linking Nantong in Jiangsu province and Ningbo in Zhejiang.

It is unclear when construction will begin.

The offshore survey that was completed on Monday took five months, two and a half months less than scheduled, said Zhang Peng, an engineer from China Railway Design Corporation, the bridge's designer.

With gales of up to 140 km/h and waves nearly 7 meters high, it was a big challenge and very risky to conduct the survey, he added.

China Railway Design developed a new drilling technology to prevent maritime bed collapse during the drilling process and improve the success of drilling from 60 percent to 90 percent.

Zhang Jian, the company's chief engineer for the railway line, said the cross-sea bridge will break world records in building railway bridges.

"We conducted research on evacuation and rescue, and operation and maintenance on the long cross-sea railway bridge, to further support the construction of cross-sea railway bridges," he added.

The railway will be an important coastal link in the Yangtze River Delta area and will boost socioeconomic development.

China's railway bridge construction has witnessed other milestones recently.

Last month, the tops of the two main towers of the Meizhou Bay bridge on China's first cross-sea high-speed railway line, in Fujian province, were sealed, a major step in its construction. The length of the bridge is 14.7 km.

The 277-km line, with a designed speed of 350 km/h, will have seven stations in major cities in Fujian and is expected to open next year.

luowangshu@chinadaily.com.cn