Bridge engineer denies going too far

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The chief engineer of the world's longest cross-sea bridge on Wednesday defended the project from widespread criticisms that it had been too hastily thrown open to meet the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China,Global Times reported.

Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in Qingdao, Shandong Province, opens to traffic on June 30. Critics have accused authorities of timing the opening of the world's longest cross-sea bridge before July 1 even though it still had loose bolts on parts of the railings.

Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in Qingdao, Shandong Province, opens to traffic on June 30. Critics have accused authorities of timing the opening of the world's longest cross-sea bridge before July 1 even though it still had loose bolts on parts of the railings. 


China Central Television reported on July 4,several gaps were found in the crash barriers on the 42.5 kilometer Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, while bolts inserted to fasten the barriers were found to be loose or uncovered.

However, Chief Engineer Shao Xinpeng insisted the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge was safe, adding that unscrewed nut caps and incomplete guardrails belonged to a subsidiary affiliated project that did not affect normal operations, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The bridge had passed inspection and is ready for traffic, agreed Li Jiansheng, a member of the bridge quality inspection team.

A construction worker said it would take at least two months before finishing all the subsidiary projects and they didn't have enough time to install all the safety barriers and to fix the bolts before the bridge's opening.

In defense, Engineer Shao argued that the relevant law allowed the highway project to start operating before the subsidiary affiliated projects like the guardrail were completed.

The key structures were the vertical bars that support the guardrails and they already had been completed, he explained.

Unscrewed nut caps would not affect the safe operation of the bridge, Han Bin, an associate professor with the department of bridge engineering at Beijing Jiaotong University, said Wednesday.

"However, if accidents occur and hit the guardrails, problems might rise," he said.

The bridge itself had no quality problems, he argued. The only problem was "on the administrative side," he believed.

"In order to present a gift for July 1, some works were unable to be finished before the bridge rushed to open to traffic, which we oppose," he said.

Spanning 36.48 kilometers across the mouth of the Jiaozhou Bay, the 14.8 billion yuan (US$2.3 billion) bridge links China's eastern port city of Qingdao to an offshore island, Huangdao, slashing the traveling time between two places from 40 minutes to 20 minutes.

It has taken four years to build the bridge, which is supported by more than 5,000 pillars.

According to Guinness World Records, the previous record holder for a bridge over water is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana.

(Global Times contributed to this story)

 

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