Work on Beiheng Passage complete in 2023
Construction of a tunnel for the eastern section of the Beiheng Passage.
Construction is in full swing on the remaining part of the Beiheng Passage, a new east-west Shanghai thoroughfare which will be fully complete and open by the end of 2023.
Half of the passage in the west part of the downtown area has opened and already eased congestion between the Beihong Road roundabout on the Middle Ring Road and the Tianmu Road roundabout on the busy South-North Elevated Highway.
On completion, the 19.1-kilometer road will link Changning, Putuo, Jing'an, Huangpu, Hongkou and Yangpu districts. It will become part of the plan to build three east-west and three north-south thoroughfares across the city to improve traffic flow.
"Drivers will be able to reach Hongqiao International Airport from north Yangpu District in only half an hour through the passage, compared with at least an hour currently," said Hou Jianfeng, a chief engineer of the Shanghai Chengtou Highway Investment Group, the project's main builder.
The east-west passage will mainly improve the connection between the Hongqiao transport hub and the Pudong New Area. It is expected to improve the vitality of the downtown area while accelerating development of the city's northern districts, according to the group.
Congestion on the Yan'an Road Elevated Highway, which is parallel to the new passage, and the northern section of the city's Inner Ring Road, will be largely relieved.
The Yan'an Road highway was once the only expressway connecting Hongqiao airport and Shanghai Railway Station. The newly opened west section of the passage has given drivers another choice.
Workers at a downtown construction site for the eastern section of the Beiheng Passage.
The passage will become a key part of the integrated traffic network in the Yangtze River Delta region. It is connected with the Shanghai-Changzhou Expressway through the Beidi Road Tunnel and Elevated Highway to become a new fast channel for vehicles from neighboring Jiangsu Province to the city's downtown and Pudong.
The under-construction east section of the passage, stretching 8.2 kilometers between Wenan Road in Jing'an District and Zhoujiazui and Neijiang roads in Yangpu, will be completed by December 2023, the group said.
Two shield machines, including the largest shield in Shanghai, will begin digging for the eastern section later this year.
"It is even more complicated to dig for the remaining section of the passage, especially beneath Zhoujiazui Road which has intricate underground pipelines and busy traffic," said Sun Wei, a senior engineer in charge of the project.
The largest shield named Zongheng, literally meaning "vertical and horizontal," was used to dig the tunnel for the west part of the passage. It has traversed over 100 buildings, five Metro lines and Suzhou Creek four times.
In one of the most challenging tasks, it had to dig beneath the historical Zhaofeng Villa as well as Metro lines 7 and 11.
The villa was built in the 1930s and its foundations are not as stable as those of newer buildings. The shield machine is enormous – around 20 meters in length. Minimizing the impact on residents became a huge task.
Engineers went to the communities and examined every house. Automatic monitoring ensured that as the machine dug through the area, structural shifts were controlled within millimeters.
At the junction of Jiangsu and Changning roads, it is only seven meters below the Metro tracks. Trains on Line 11 reduced their speed to prevent vibrations affecting the digging progress.
The Beihong Road roundabout.
