In a bid to upgrade the city's image as an international metropolis,
leaders in Shanghai are kicking off a new round of infrastructure
construction that will involve 20 key projects, officials revealed
recently.
"It is a new
era of construction," said Zheng Xinlian, spokeswoman
for the Municipal Engineering Administration. "We have
almost paid off all our historical debts in the past decade
in terms of infrastructure."
Among the 20 projects,
which will all be completed during the 10th Five-Year Plan
period (2001-05), perhaps the most important is the building
of more links between the two sides of the Huangpu River,
Zheng said.
City planners have
designed four primary river-crossings- one bridge and three
tunnels. The most ambitious is the 2,880-meter-long Taihelu
Tunnel, which will be the longest underwater pipeline tunnel
in Asia and the third longest in the world.
"The tunnel
will complete the whole outer ring, serving as the best traffic
solution to Baoshan District in the north of Shanghai,"
said Xia Heping, an official with the Outer-Ring Tunnel Project
Construction Company.
Hong Kong Construction
Holdings Ltd, one of the foremost pipe-sinking construction
groups in Asia, is co-operating with Xia's company on the
project.
The tunnel will
cost a total of 1.1 billion yuan (US$132.5 million) and is
expected to be completed and open to traffic by the end of
2002.
Pipes that will
be used in construction are currently being assembled in two
dry docks. Once the assembly is complete, the pipes will be
floated into the river and sunk into the ditches, the deepest
of which reaches 33 meters below river surface.
After construction
is finished on the tunnel and two other major transportation
links, the city will be surrounded by a 98-kilometre outer
ring road that is expected to significantly ease traffic throughout
the city.
One of those other
links is the 7-kilometre-long Gonghexinlu Elevated Highway,
also to be completed by the end of 2002.
The highway will
provide commuters with a three-in-one transportation option,
Zheng said. The project will encompass extensions of a highway
(upper layer) and the Metro Line I northern spur (middle layer),
in addition to eight extra lanes of road for automobile traffic
(bottom layer).
Xia predicts the
Gonghexinlu highway will make travel much easier for thousands
of Shanghai residents.
The majority of
projects are centered around improving traffic flow within
the city and its suburbs.
(China Daily 02/07/2001)
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