The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge (simplified Chinese: 丹昆特大桥; traditional Chinese: 丹昆特大橋; pinyin: Dān-Kūn tèdà qiáo) is a 164.8-kilometre-long (102.4 mi) viaduct on the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway.[2] It is the longest bridge in the world.[3]
The bridge is located on the rail line between Shanghai and Nanjing in Jiangsu province. It is in the Yangtze River Delta, where the geography is characterized by lowland rice paddies, canals, rivers, and lakes. The bridge runs roughly parallel to the Yangtze River, about 8 to 80 km (5 to 50 mi) south of the river. It passes through the northern edges of population centers (from west to east) beginning in Danyang, Changzhou, Wuxi, Suzhou, and ending in Kunshan. There is a 9-kilometre long (5.6 mi) section over open water across Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou.[1]
Construction was completed in 2010 and the bridge opened in 2011. Employing 10,000 people, the project took four years and cost about $8.5 billion.[1] The bridge currently holds the Guinness World Record for the longest bridge in the world in any category as of June 2011[update].[3][4]
The China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Company designed and built the bridge. It is a Chinese government-funded company which was originally part of the Foreign Aid Office of the Ministry of Communications of China. This company leads major civil engineering projects in China like highways, railways, bridges, ports, and tunnels.[5]
China also has the world's longest bridge, the 102-mile Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, a high-speed rail viaduct running parallel to the Yangtze River, and is nearing completion of the world's longest sea bridge, a 14-mile cable-stay bridge skimming across the Pearl River Delta, part of a 22-mile bridge and tunnel crossing that connects Hong Kong and Macau with mainland China.