China opens world’s longest sea bridge

China has opened the world’s longest sea bridge, a 26.4 mile-long structure that could easily span the English Channel.

Stretching across the wide blue waters of Jiaozhou bay, the vast Y-shaped bridge connects the booming Northern port city of Qingdao with an airport built on a nearby island and the industrial suburb of Huangdao.

The first motorists to roll onto the bridge’s six-lane, 110ft-wide, highway halved their journey time to the other side of the bay to just 30 minutes.

While the bridge will eventually charge cars 50 yuan (£4.80) for the crossing, for a month the drive will be free.

While traffic on the bridge was sparse on its opening, city officials predicted that 30,000 cars a day would eventually cross it each day.

“It is a magnificent and very advanced bridge,” said Li Qun, the local Communist party secretary, at the opening ceremony. “It is another stepping stone in the city’s smooth and rapid development”.

“We have learned a lot of new techniques and skills during the construction,” said Shao Xinpeng, the bridge’s chief engineer.

At least 10,000 workers toiled in two teams around the clock to build the bridge, working from opposite sides of the bay and linking the two ends together in the middle. “That was a totally original design,” claimed Mr Shao.

While they were working on the bridge, more engineers were simultaneously building an accompanying tunnel underneath the bay, which will help to ease the traffic flow.

A staggering 450,000 tons of steel was used in the construction, enough for almost 65 Eiffel Towers, and 2.3 million cubic metres of concrete. Chinese officials said that the bridge will be strong enough to withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake, typhoons or the impact of a 300,000 ton ship.

The bridge has eclipsed the current Guinness World Record-holder, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana, by at least two-and-a-half miles.

However, it will be eclipsed in 2016 by another Chinese bridge, which is being built to link Hong Kong with Macau and Guangdong province and which will be around 30 miles long.

China also boasts a 102-mile-long land bridge on the route of the Beijing to Shanghai high-speed railway.

The world’s longest sea bridge, Qingdao Haiwan Bridge, deconstructed:

Length: 26.4 miles (almost 3 miles longer than the previous record holder)

Width: Six-lane expressway

Capacity: Expected to carry over 30,000 cars a day

Tensile strength: Able to withstand earthquakes of 8.0 magnitudes on the Richter scale, strong typhoons and the impact of a 300,000 tonne vessel

Made up of: 450,000 tonnes of steel and 2.3 million cubic metres of concrete, supported by 5,200 columns

Built by: More than 10,000 workers

Built in: Four years

Importance: Reduces the distance between Quingdao city and the Huangdao district by around 18 miles