Amur Bridge Project

The Amur Bridge Project is an international Sino-Russian bridge construction project that was first proposed in 2007 by Valery Solomonovich Gurevich, the vice-chairman of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Projected start dates for the actual construction to begin have ranged from 2007 to 2014, with no officially projected construction start date currently available (as of 2013). The bridge would link Nizhneleninskoye (in Russian: Нижнеленинское) in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast with Tongjiang (in Chinese: 同江) in Heilongjiang Province. The 2,197-meter-long bridge, would require an estimated investment of nearly US$230 million Gurevich said.[1] Gurevich said that the proposal to construct a bridge across the river was first suggested by the Russian side, in view of growing cargo transportation demands.

The main class of cargo going over the future bridge would be iron ore from Petropavlovsk plc's open-pit mine in Kimkan in Jewish Autonomous Oblast.[2][3] The Petropavlovsk mining company would participate in financing the bridge.[2]

As of May 2013 construction had not yet begun, but the transport ministries of the two countries had signed a general construction agreement.[4]

During President Putin's visit to China in May 2014, another agreement about the construction of the same bridge was signed by the Russian and Chinese officials. This time, it was announced that the construction would start "in a few months", and would be completed by 2016.[5] In September 2014 Russia and China have founded a joint company which will control the process of building the bridge.[6]

As of November 2014, the local Russian media reported that a significant amount of the construction work had been carried out on the Chinese part of the bridge, but hardly anything has been done on the Russian part.[7]

As of July 2016 the Chinese portion of the bridge was finished but work had not started on the much shorter Russian portion.[8]

Design

The bridge has been designed by Russia's Giprostroymost institute, satisfying both Russian and Chinese standards. The bridge will have both a standard gauge (1435 mm) track and a Russian gauge (1520 mm) track; however, the two tracks will be offset by merely 800 mm, so that only one track could be used at any given time.[9]

References

  1. ↑ "China-Russia Trade to Top US$40b". China Daily. 2007-06-18. Retrieved 2008-08-14.
  2. 1 2 ANDREW E. KRAMER (June 9, 2010), "China's Hunger Fuels Exports in Remote Russia", The New York Times
  3. ↑ "UPDATE 2-Shares of Petropavlovsk's IRC slump in Hong Kong debut". Reuters. Oct 21, 2010.
  4. ↑ "Строительство первого железнодорожного моста соединяющего Китай и Россию начнется в 2009 году" (Construction of the first railway bridge connecting Russia and China will start in 2009) China.org.cn, 2008-11-27. (Russian)
  5. ↑ Мост через Амур между РФ и КНР начнут строить в ближайшие месяцы (Construction of the bridge across the Amur between the RF and the PRC will start within a few months), 2014-05-20
  6. ↑ "Russia and China establish company to build a bridge across Amur River" (Press release). TASS. 26 September 2014. Retrieved 2014-10-02.
  7. ↑ Далеко в отрыв ушли от коллег из ЕАО китайские строители ж/д моста Нижнеленинское-Тунцзян (The Chinese builders of the Nizhneleninskoye-Tongjiang railway bridge are far ahead of their colleagues from the Jewish A.O.), 2014-11-05
  8. ↑ Andrew Higgins (July 16, 2016). "An Unfinished Bridge, and Partnership, Between Russia and China". The New York Times. Retrieved July 17, 2016.
  9. ↑ Construction of 2·2 km Amur bridge begins, 14 Mar 2014

See also

Coordinates: 47°57′N 132°40′E / 47.95°N 132.66°E / 47.95; 132.66

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/17/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.