(Newswire.net — July 16, 2019) — On May 31, 2019, near the Russian Amur Oblast city of Blagoveshchensk and the Chinese Heilongjiang Province city of Heihe, employees of the SK Most Group of Companies, which is owned by Ruslan Baisarov, together with Chinese bridge-building specialists, symbolically tightened the last bolts on both sides of the highway bridge stretching across the Amur River, also known as the Heilongjiang River. This is the first bridge for vehicles that connects the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.
Details of the Highway Bridge
The Blagoveshchensk-Heihe bridge crossing is designed to be an extradosed bridge. It looks like a cable-stayed bridge, but it has shorter pylons. The bridge’s design allows for the use of fewer steel elements, thus reducing the weight of its span. The bridge has two lanes, one for each direction.
The construction of the bridge began in December 2016 and was carried out simultaneously from both the Russian and Chinese sides of the river. The Russian section of the bridge, like the Chinese section, is 540 meters long, which is exactly half of the total length of the bridge across the Amur. The construction work on the Russian side also includes the construction of the approaches to the bridge. The total length of the entire Russian part of the project, including the approaches, is 13.9 kilometers.
In addition to this bridge, which is the main one over the Amur, the project includes a long bridge over the Kanikurgan Channel, which is in the final stages of construction.
Professional Cooperation Helped Complete the Project Quickly
Despite the seasonal spring flooding of the Amur, the well-coordinated teamwork of the specialists from the SK Most Group of Companies allowed for the project to be completed within a very short amount of time.
The next stage of construction involves the installation of strands and adding tension to the stay cables as well as laying concrete on the floor of the bridge.
The work is being carried out in compliance with the concession agreement between the two countries and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2019.
The bridge is expected to be open to traffic along the two-lane highway in 2020, when border checkpoints will also be put into operation.