China immediately built an underwater railway tunnel that connects Ningbo City with the Zhoushan Islands along 16.2 kilometers in the eastern territorial waters.
China's fast train will have the first and longest underwater tunnel in China, local media said today.
After preparing for two years, the technical proposal for the construction of the subway tunnel has passed the assessment of the expert board led by Qian Qihu from Chinese Academy Engineering last week.
Reporting from Antara on Monday (3/8), the transportation route of the Zhoushan Islands, Zhejiang Province, with the mainland region of China will be connected by express train from Ningbo as far as 77 kilometers through tunnels and several bridges via Jintang Island.
Not only is the train fast, the project also allows travel of motorized vehicles under the sea through separate tunnels, the proposal reads.
Unlike a submerged tube tunnel on one of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge sections, the Ningbo-Zhoushan underwater railway tunnel will be built using a shield buried deeper so that it will lead to complicated project work.
Tunnel shield with a diameter of 14 meters will stretch along 10.87 kilometers under the sea with a maximum depth of 78 meters.
This will set a new record in the world, said Tang Xiongjun of the China Railway Siyuan and Design Group responsible for the underwater tunnel project.
When construction is complete, then from Ningbo to Zhoushan can only be reached within 30 minutes with an average train speed of 250 kilometers per hour.
During this time, traveling on the route by car that crosses several bridges takes about 1.5 hours.
Meanwhile, if from Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, to the Zhoushan Islands in the eastern territorial waters of mainland China, it only takes 1 hour 20 minutes.
The Chinese government states that construction will begin this year and will take six to seven years.
Previously, in Ningbo there was also a bridge over the sea along 35.7 kilometers to shorten the path from Shanghai.
Ningbo is a port city on the east coast of China.
SOURCE: MERDEKA