The world’s longest cable-stayed bridge, the Changtai Yangtze River Bridge, officially opened to traffic on the 9th. The bridge is the first 'three-in-one' river-crossing channel over the Yangtze River. After the bridge opens, travel time between Changzhou and Taizhou in Jiangsu will be shortened from 1 hour and 20 minutes to 20 minutes.
The Changtai Yangtze River Bridge is a double-deck, highway-railway composite river-crossing passage. The highway section serves as the river-crossing segment of the Ru-Chang Expressway (S30). The upper deck has six lanes for two-way traffic; the lower deck has four lanes for two-way traffic. The main river-crossing section of the bridge has a total length of 10.03 kilometers, of which the combined highway-railway section is 5.3 kilometers long. It consists of a 1,208-meter-span steel truss cable-stayed bridge over the main navigation channel, two 388-meter-span steel truss arch bridges over dedicated navigation channels, and a non-navigable steel truss beam bridge with three spans of 124 meters each. The bridge integrates expressway, intercity railway, and regular roadway into one.
The bridge sets six world records, including: longest span cable-stayed bridge, longest span highway-railway dual-purpose steel truss arch bridge, longest continuous length of steel truss, largest size carbon fiber composite cable, highest strength parallel steel wire cable-stay, and largest scale multifunctional load asymmetric bridge.