High-speed railway brings Zhengzhou and Hubei cities, Chongqing closer

The opening of the Zhengzhou-Wanzhou High-speed Railway has connected Central China's Henan province with Shennongjia and other areas of northwestern Hubei province, created fresh tourism development patterns in the middle and western China, and further strengthened regional integration between the Wuhan Metropolitan Area, Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle and the Central China City Cluster.

The high-speed railway has also brought tremendous development dividends and cooperation opportunities to Shennongjia National Park.

Built by the CCCC Second Harbour Engineering Company, the Zhengzhou-Xiangyang section of the railway was put into operation in December 2019. Passengers can take high-speed trains from Xiangyang and Shiyan cities in Hubei directly to Zhengzhou, with a shortest commuting time of two hours.

With a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour and a length of 818 kilometers, the Zhengzhou-Wanzhou High-speed Railway has been built with rotary cable-stayed bridges, rotary T-shaped bridges and prefabricated box girder bridges. The rotary cable-stayed bridge crossing the Xuzhou-Lanzhou High-Speed Railway was a challenging project, known for the smallest curve radius, the largest longitudinal slope and the furthest eccentric distance.

Meanwhile, the rotary cable-stayed bridge was characterized with high technologies, complex construction procedures, multiple technical challenges and great difficulty in construction control.

During the construction process, builders made many technical breakthroughs and filled a domestic gap in the rotation of large-tonnage irregular cable-stayed bridges across high-speed railway operating lines. The weight of the bridge during rotation reached 16,000 tons, equivalent to a light aircraft carrier.

Construction workers followed relevant government requirements, promoted the utilization of information management platforms, and achieved such management effects as penetration management, intelligent monitoring, long-distance surveillance, full-process traceability and transparent evaluation.

The Zhengzhou-Wanzhou railway is not only an important part of Henan's "star-shaped" high-speed rail network but also a major passenger high-speed transportation corridor connecting southwest and central China. The Beijing-Zhengzhou-Chongqing-Kunming High-speed Railway corridor has since become fully operational, connecting Beijing-Guangzhou, Lanzhou-Lianyungang and Lanzhou-Chongqing railway lines.

It has also greatly shortened the temporal distance from Chongqing and the Three Gorges Reservoir Area with southwest, northwest, central and northern China. For instance, it now only takes about seven hours for people to travel from Chongqing to Beijing.