Builders of China Railway No.4 Engineering Group Co., Ltd. (CREC4) have successfully completed water stable layer construction for a major section of a parallel expressway linking Chongqing Municipality and Hunan Province.
The No 5 bid of the Banan-Pengshui section of the Chongqing-Hunan Parallel Expressway, built by constructors from CREC4 Sixth Engineering Co., Ltd, witnessed its first section of the water stable layer construction ended on October 8, 2023, marking new progress on the parallel expressway.
With a total length of 280 kilometers, the Chongqing-Hunan Parallel Expressway is composed of three sections —Banan-Pengshui, Pengshui-Youyang and Wulong-Daozhen — and runs through five districts and counties of Banan, Nanchuan, Pengshui, Youyang and Wulong. With an investment of 64.6 billion yuan ($9.64 billion), it started construction in 2020, with a construction schedule of four to six years.
CREC4’s construction, as the No 5 bid which is located in Zhongqiao Township and Shuijiang Township, extends for 6.931 kilometers. The bid section, which is a two-way six-lane expressway, starts at the entrance of Shuijiang Tunnel and ends at the end of Shuijiang Interchange. The main construction includes Shuijiang Tunnel, Xujiaba Bridge, Dalongdong Bridge, subgrade on the expressway and Shuijiang Interchange.
The No 5 bid section starts at K71+210 and ends at K81+300, covering works on the 3,432-meter-long Shuijiang Tunnel, six road bridges of 1,428 meters long, five ramp bridges at 861.6 meters long, one overpass extending for 60 meters, 280 embedded rock piles, 638 T-shaped prefabricated beams, 207 cast-in-place box beams, steel box beams weighing 4,900 tons, some 1.33 million cubic meters of earthwork excavation for subgrade, 1.39 million cubic meters of earthwork for filling, and 22 culverts.
It has been learned that 80 percent of the Chongqing-Hunan Parallel Expressway are bridges and tunnels, making it one of the most difficult comprehensive undertakings in the history of Chongqing’s expressway construction.
Upon completion and operation to traffic, the parallel expressway will help effectively alleviate the congestion of the current Chongqing-Hunan Expressway, open up local tourism resources along the route and boost the diversity and mutual exchanges of the local economies.