China plans to award a design-build contract soon for the sunken tube tunnel and artificial islands comprising part of the 30-kilometer-long, $5.5-billion road link between Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macau, in the Pearl River Delta. Bids for the bridge section will follow in a few months, says a project source. Officials plan to open the link in 2016.
From Hong Kong, some 5 km of bridges will link to two 700-meter-long islands, which will be linked by the tunnel. The crossing will continue on three cable-stayed bridges with spans from 280 m to 460 m. Viaducts will carry the link to Macau via another island. At 5.6 km, the tunnel will be 2 km longer than the world’s record-holder, the Denmark-Sweden Øresund, say engineers with COWI A/S, Copenhagen. With team leader China Highway Planning and Design Institute Consultants, COWI did preliminary design of the tunnel and islands. Arup Group, London, handled the design of some of the bridges.