The Changtai Yangtze River Bridge, the world’s longest cable-stayed bridge, has officially opened to traffic in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu. The new crossing connects the cities of Changzhou and Taizhou, reducing travel time from over 80 minutes to just 20 minutes.

The bridge is 10.3 km long, and its main span measures 1,208 meters, making it the longest span of its kind in the world. The bridge towers rise to a height of 350 meters – equivalent to a 120-story skyscraper. Construction took six years and required the use of a number of innovative technological solutions.

The Changtai Yangtze River Bridge is the first bridge on the Yangtze River to combine an expressway, a local road, and an intercity railway line in a single structure. What is more, its lower level has a unique, asymmetrical layout: on one side there is a railway line, and on the other – a local road. This is the first such solution in the world, as usually the railway is placed in the axis of the structure.

The bridge has set several world engineering records:

• the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world,
• the longest bridge connecting a road and a railway in a steel arch structure,
• the world’s longest continuous spans made of steel girders.

Pioneering solutions were used during construction, including: the world’s first intelligent tower crane with a lifting capacity of over 10,000 ton-meters, the largest deck crane assembling segments with millimeter precision, the world’s fastest technique for sinking caissons in difficult clay layers, hybrid steel-concrete pylons built using a new industrial method, and satellite-controlled cranes ensuring precise assembly.