The Hong Kong section of the new Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is ready to take traffic following the completion of road surfacing works, according to the Hong Kong Transport Department.
The significant milestone, announced over the weekend, covers 9.4km of viaducts, the 1km-long Scenic Hill Tunnel and 1.6km of at-grade roads along the east coast of Lantau Island near Hong Kong International Airport. The combined 12km section links Hong Kong’s border crossing facilities with the main span of the HK$50 billion bridge, which is tentatively tipped to begin full operations in May or June this year.
The Transport Department also revealed that the viaduct section connecting the Hong Kong SAR boundary with Scenic Hill on the airport island has successfully passed a new load test. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge was at the center of a major scandal last year when it was discovered that a site laboratory technician falsified the results of strength tests on some concrete samples taken from the bridge.
Confirming that these latest tests had come back clear, the department said, “The load test commenced on the HKLR viaduct section in mid-October 2017 and was carried out on all 230 spans of the 19 bridge structures. The analysis indicated that all the bridge structures of the HKLR viaduct complied with the requirement for the designed loading capacity.”
It added that the Director of Highways, Daniel Chung, visited the site on 11 January to witness the load test on the last bridge span. Tests on all 230 spans were conducted using a convoy of vehicles weighing a combined 380 tons.
With the road surfacing works and road facilities now completed, remaining works still in progress include the final installation and testing of the Traffic Control and Surveillance System and final work on some ancillary facilities, the Transport Department said.
When finished the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge will span a total of 55 kilometers and cut road travel time between the three cities to less than an hour.
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