Work starts on Pudong 'high' road
The first pillar of the Jiyang Road Elevated Expressway is raised on Monday morning.
Construction started on Monday on the main structure of a new elevated expressway in Pudong to better connect the middle and outer ring roads with downtown.
The 7.1-kilometer Jiyang Road Expressway runs along the current Jiyang Road, a major thoroughfare that is often heavily congested.
Upon completion in 2020, the expressway is expected to relieve pressure on the Inner Ring Road and Lupu Bridge, which is connected to the South-North Elevated Road, one of the busiest roads in the city.
Nearly 4,500 vehicles pass along Jiyany Road per hour at peak times, far exceeding its capacity, according to the city’s transport authority. The elevated expressway over the road will double its capacity.
The first pillar of the elevated part, 9 meters tall and weighing 81 tons, was erected on Monday morning. All 218 pillars will be up by the end of this year and the main structure finished by 2020.
The first pillar goes up on Monday morning.
The new expressway will have six lanes with designed speed of 80 kilometers per hour and above the existing six lanes on the ground, said project manager Cao Yifeng, of the Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co Road and Bridge Group, the city’s major bridge constructor.
Sanlin and Lingzhao roads will be cut off from Jiyang Road during construction. The Middle Ring Road will be improved.
To minimize disruption to traffic along the road, over 90 percent of the parts are prefabricated in factories and assembled on site. Forty of the 218 pillars have already been made, Cao said. Workers can put up about six pillars a day.
Noise and dust during the construction have been largely reduced, while the number of workers has also been cut by a fourth to 150.
An artistic renditon of how the Jiyang Road Elevated Expressway will eventually look
