On March 27, 2026, near Guandao Gorge in the Fengjie section of the Yangtze River, with the roar of construction machinery, a "super project" carrying the expectations of hundreds of thousands of Fengjie people officially took a crucial step from blueprint to reality. The main arch support project on the north bank of the Fengjie Kuizhou Yangtze River Bridge, which was constructed with the participation of China Railway Major Bridge Bureau, has fully met the conditions for on-site construction. This marks the beginning of the construction of the world's largest mid span mesh suspension arch bridge with a main span of 470 meters, and the acceleration of urban development and improvement of people's livelihoods in Fengjie has been pressed.

This bridge is the core and soul of the North South Safe Passage Project in the Fengjie County Resettlement Area. The entire project starts from the eastern end of Guiyuan Road and ends at Provincial Highway 102 in Yongle Town on the south bank of the Yangtze River, with a total length of 5.2 kilometers. It is not just a bridge, but also a lifeline and development line that will completely break through the bottleneck of cross river transportation in the north and south of Fengjie in the future. The whole line of the project is built according to the standard of first-class highway, with a design speed of 60km/h. In the future, it will also serve as an urban road, and become a key link in the "two ring and four horizontal" road network framework in Fengjie central urban planning.

How was the rainbow of steel born

The construction of the Kuizhou Yangtze River Bridge is itself an epic that challenges the limits of engineering. The main bridge of the bridge has a total length of 490.8 meters, and its core is the middle supported mesh arch bridge with a main span of 470 meters, like a long rainbow lying on the waves. The curve of the arch ribs is elegant and powerful, adopting a quadratic parabolic design with a rise of 80 meters.

The 'skeleton' of this bridge is extremely magnificent. The two main arch ribs are made of large-diameter hollow steel pipes with an inner diameter of 3.4 meters. The entire bridge arch ribs are divided into 38 giant segments, with the heaviest S1 segment weighing up to 204.4 tons, equivalent to the weight of hundreds of cars. In order to support this magnificent skeleton, the builders designed 16 cross braces between two arch ribs and installed 8 pairs of rigid suspension rods below the bridge deck, with 76 pairs of flexible suspension cables above, weaving together a sturdy and exquisite spatial network structure to support the two-way 6-lane and pedestrian traffic bridge deck.

Every step is a high-altitude ballet

The construction difficulty of accurately assembling tens of thousands of tons of steel components over the wide Yangtze River can be called a 'high-altitude ballet'. The bridge project mainly uses large cable cranes and fastening systems for construction, and challenges are everywhere:

Firstly, the cable crane used for construction is itself a "giant" with a rated lifting capacity of 2 × 220 tons and a main span of 720 meters. The cable tower supporting it has a height of over 100 meters and innovatively adopts the design of "cable buckle integration". More intricately, in order to meet the lifting requirements of horizontal components, the cable saddle at the top of the tower is designed as a horizontally movable structure, as if installing a "translation track" for the crane.

Secondly, the construction process is like a precise space docking. The arch ribs of the main bridge will be divided into multiple segments and assembled in a cantilevered manner in the air like building blocks using the "diagonal bracing method". The lifting, aerial alignment, and precise control of the overall line shape of each large segment weighing hundreds of tons all place extreme demands on technology. In addition, the extensive deployment of anchor systems, cable wind systems, and the installation and tensioning of steel strands are all tests of the wisdom and courage of the builders.

A bridge flying frame from north to south

The construction of the Kuizhou Yangtze River Bridge has a significance that goes far beyond the bridge itself. It is located near Guandao Gorge in the Fengjie section of the Yangtze River, about 7 kilometers away from the existing Kuimen Yangtze River Bridge downstream. After the completion of the bridge, it will form an efficient cross river passage together with 8 other bridges and 1 karst tunnel within the north-south safety passage project of the Fengjie County resettlement area.

The direct value of this passage is to solve the long-standing problem of north-south transportation barriers in Fengjie, and truly turn the natural barrier into a thoroughfare. And the deeper significance lies in that it is a significant practice for Fengjie to accelerate the iteration and upgrading of urban infrastructure, effectively guarantee and improve the livelihood of immigrants. The steel components transported from upstream are navigating and hoisting on the main channel of the Yangtze River, which poses a huge challenge to complex hydrological conditions and safety control, and also indicates that this area will be a busy and prosperous scene in the future.Editor/Yang Meiling