(Original title: Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge officially opened today: multiple innovations, breaking the limit of marine bridge engineering)

After six years of preparation and nine years of construction, the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge was officially opened. From scheme design to construction, Chinese creations have broken the limits of the world's offshore bridge projects.

The total length of the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge is about 55 kilometers, of which the main works include 22.9 kilometers of bridges, 6.7 kilometers of undersea tunnels and east-west artificial islands connecting tunnels and bridges.

　　 CCTV reporter Wu Jie : My current location is the East Island of the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge. Above me is the dense takeoff and landing routes of the Hong Kong International Airport. Behind me is the busy golden waterway on Lingdingyang. It is necessary to link the core areas of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, and avoid affecting the sea and air transportation here. Many bridge experts believe that this is almost an impossible task.

In order to realize the mutual influence of sea, land and air traffic, the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge has adopted the world's first integrated bridge, island and tunnel scheme. In the vast sea, engineers surrounded two 100000 square meters artificial islands with 120 huge steel cylinders with a diameter of 22 meters and a height of 18 floors. The whole project took only 212 days.

The 6.7km long subsea tunnel is made of 33 large immersed tubes docked on the seabed. Each immersed tube weighs more than 80000 tons, equivalent to an aircraft carrier. The accuracy of the docking of immersed tubes should reach centimeter level. These are unprecedented technological innovations in the history of bridge construction in the world

　　 Su Quanke, Chief Engineer of Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge Authority : Bridges, tunnels and artificial islands are all precisely manufactured in factories. Large equipment is pulled over for one installation, so the quality of this bridge is very high, which has pushed China's bridge construction to the level of industrial construction. When foreign experts came to our bridge, they were surprised that the Chinese people could build the bridge like this.

In the design of the overall bridge, the main bridge of the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge is largely constructed of prefabricated steel structures, with a total steel consumption of 420000 tons, which is enough to build ten bird nests. The exquisite construction technology has made the service life of the bridge as long as 120 years, 20 years longer than the design service life of the current world's sea crossing bridges, and become a new benchmark for bridge construction in the world.

　　 Tan Guoshun, Project Manager of Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge Project of China Railway Bridge Bureau : The requirements for the accuracy of each component are getting higher and higher, and it is impossible to install them due to the large misalignment. The Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge proposed the requirement that the deviation (installation) should be 1cm, which is unimaginable in the process of large-scale project construction in the world. The technical standard of Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge is far higher than that of any other country in the world.

After the completion and opening of the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macao Bridge, the overland traffic from Hong Kong to Zhuhai will be reduced from the previous three hours to 30 minutes. This super project in Lingdingyang will rewrite the economic landscape of the Pearl River Delta and lay a solid foundation for the integration and construction of the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area.