Construction of a bridge connecting Shanghai's Chongming Island and Jiangsu Province has been approved, the city's engineering administration bureau said yesterday.

The plan is part of a regional strategy to further integrate Shanghai with neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

The bridge would span 7 km of the Yangtze River, linking Shanghai's Chongming Island to the city of Qidong in Jiangsu. Elevated highways will also help link the two areas.

The Shanghai section would be linked to an ongoing project connecting mainland Shanghai with Chongming Island by tunnel, bridge and expressway.

Planners said that when construction wraps up in 2009, it would cut travel time between Pudong and Chongming to 20 minutes.

Including the bridge would cut travel time between Shanghai and Qidong to just more than an hour and put any major city in Jiangsu Province within three hours' drive from the municipality.

Inter-province highways and bridges are either under construction or in the pipeline to increase economic and social integration among the three areas to give the region a competitive edge. This includes a bridge connecting Chongming and Haimen, Jiangsu Province.

By 2020, an expressway network would cut travel time among any major cities of the municipality and two provinces to less than three hours.

According to the city's Labor Daily, construction on the bridge between Chongming and Qidong would officially start next year and finish in 2010.

The construction would eventually become part of a highway network connecting Shanghai and Xi'an, Shaanxi Province.

(China Daily December 7, 2007)