Preparation for test period of Hangzhou Bay Sea-crossing Bridge has been completed. The Bridge is being open to traffic for test after a short and solemn ceremony this afternoon. This is the news released at press conference about the opening of the Hangzhou Bay Sea-crossing Bridge.

According to introduction, the Hangzhou Bay Sea-crossing Bridge is a shortcut of Shenyang-Haikou Express Way, a national trunk. The Bridge starts from Haiyan, Jiaxing City in its North and ends at Cixi, Ningbo City across the Hangzhou Bay. With the total length of 36 km, it is so far the longest bay bridge in the world. The Bridge has a high way of 6 lanes for two ways on it, with designed speed of 100 km/hour, designed service life of 100 years and total investment of 11.8 billion RMB.

The Bridge is a super large-scale transportation infrastructure, which is designed, managed, built and invested by Chinese people. It is a milestone in the history of sea-crossing bridge building in China. The process of building the Hangzhou Bay Sea-crossing Bridge is the process of incessant innovation. The Bridge is the outcome of the innovations propelled by all the builders in conception, science and technology, and management. Since the beginning of the construction in November 2003, there have been some 250 items of technical innovations which conducted with 9 core technologies. Several of those technologies are used for their first time in the world. The completion of the Bridge shows the world great success achieved by China in the field of building super large-scale bridge.

The opening of the Hangzhou Bay Sea-crossing Bridge will exert great influence onto the further development of the Yangtze River Delta. According to forecast by authorities of global economy, the group of cities in the Yangtze River Delta with Shanghai at its core, following Paris, London, New York, Tokyo and Chicago, will be the sixth international metropolitan circle. After the Bridge is open to traffic, the distance among the cities in the Yangtze River Delta will be shrunk obviously. The road distance between Shanghai and Ningbo will be cut by 120 km then. A two-hour transportation network among the Golden Triangle of Shanghai, Hangzhou and Ningbo will be realized. People from Shanghai can reach Wenzhou and Taizhou through the Bridge. The distance between the cities of Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou in the south of Jiangsu Province and the cities of Ningbo and Shaoxing in the northeast of Zhejiang Province will be shrunk to 200 km. The relationship among all those cities will be much closer. Different resources can be combined further together in the region.

Moreover, opening of the Hangzhou Bay Sea-crossing Bridge will bring new opportunities for better and faster economic development in Ningbo. Ningbo is speeding up construction of international modern port city. Ningbo Port, with some 60 terminals of 10,000-tonnage or above, over 100 international container lines and links with more than 600 ports of some 100 countries worldwide, will become another important outlet for those cities in the Yangtze River Delta opening to the outside world, due to the increasingly convenient transportation. In 2007, the throughput of Ningbo Port reached 345 million tons, ranking the 2nd place in Chinese Mainland and the 4th place in the world. It also handled containers of 9.35 million TEU, which was the 4th in Chinese Mainland and 11th in the world. The shorter distance between Ningbo and Shanghai will further cooperation among ports in Yangtze River Delta. The more significant is that the City of Ningbo is implementing the strategy of “Synchronization of the Port, the Bridge and the marine industry”, making great efforts to bring the resources into full play, exploring the potential of the resources, strengthening the integrity of the resources, maximizing the efficiency of the resources. Following the Hangzhou Bay Sea-crossing Bridge, Xiangshan Harbor Bridge, Ningbo-Zhoushan Island-linking project are under construction. In the near future, the deep-water coastal line in Xiangshan and Zhoushan will provide plenty room for sustainable development of the ports in the Yangtze River Delta.