Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, Railway bridge in Jiangsu, China
The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge is a railway structure made of reinforced concrete that stretches across 165 kilometers through Jiangsu Province in eastern China. The construction runs through flat landscapes of rice paddies, crosses multiple rivers, and spans a large lake between Shanghai and Nanjing.
Construction began in 2008 and was completed in 2010, with the bridge opening on 30 June 2011. The project employed 10,000 people over four years and cost about $8.5 billion, built as part of the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway by the China Road and Bridge Corporation.
The name connects two cities along the route and follows Chinese tradition of naming long structures after geographic endpoints. Today the construction serves as part of a network moving millions of travelers daily between economic centers and shaping everyday life across the region.
Trains cross the structure at speeds reaching 300 kilometers per hour (186 miles per hour) while monitoring systems track conditions continuously. The construction can withstand earthquakes measuring magnitude eight and was designed for extreme weather conditions.
More than five thousand concrete pillars support the structure and were anchored deep into bedrock to provide stability on soft ground. A nine-kilometer section over Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou was reinforced to withstand impacts from passing vessels.
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