A new bridge across the Pearl River estuary officially opened on April 2, and it is expected to play an important role in accelerating economic cooperation and infrastructure connectivity among cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
The Nansha Bridge is the first innovative megaproject to begin service after the central government unveiled development plans for the Bay Area in February, according to Liu Xiaohua, general manager of Guangdong Provincial Communications Group Ltd.
“It is a major passageway that links the large cities of Shenzhen, Dongguan and Huizhou in the eastern part of Pearl River Delta to Foshan, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing in the western part,” Liu said at the launching ceremony on April 2.
The central government’s development plan for the Bay Area encourages Guangdong province cities, plus Hong Kong and Macao, to further expand their cooperation and exchanges to become a world-class Bay Area in the coming years.
“Completion of the bridge also marks a milestone in expressway construction in Guangdong province, one of the country’s economic powerhouses,” Liu said.
Guangdong, the nation’s first area to launch reform and opening-up, now has over 9,000 kilometers of expressways in service, thus taking the lead in expressway construction on the mainland, he said.
The Nansha Bridge connects Guangdong’s expressway network — from Dongchong in Guangzhou’s Nansha district where Nansha Port is located, to Shatian in Dongguan, known as “the world’s factory”.
Drivers transporting goods can shorten their travel by at least 10 km, or 30 minutes, when they drive from Guangzhou’s southern areas via the Nansha Bridge to Dongguan, Liu added.
Construction of the massive project started about five years ago, and has cost more than 11 billion yuan ($1.64 billion).
