Chinese expressways and highways

[Chris]

G0424 has a new cable-stayed bridge near Zhengzhou in Henan province.



But it spans nothing. This is in the Yellow River riverbed, which changes its course every year, often significantly. This is due to extremely large amounts of sediment from the Loess Plateau. Most of the riverbed is actually higher than the surrounding area, which causes large engineering challenges to prevent catastrophic flooding.

They built the Xiaolangdi Reservoir farther upstream in Henan as a dam to trap sediment and release it in a more controlled fashion.

I've made this gif at the bridge location, showing the riverbed changes from 2010 to 2022:

[Chris]

The world's longest twin-tube road tunnel opened to traffic in Xinjiang today.

It's a 22.1 km (13.7 mile) tunnel, part of G0711 Wuruo Expressway, or Ürümqi - Ruoqiang Expressway. This stretch of expressway runs through the Tian Shan Mountain Range. It provides a considerably shorter route from Ürümqi to Korla and points in western Xinjiang. The previous route runs all the way east of this mountain range.

While China has been constructing a lot of tunnels in the range of 10 - 13 kilometers, they did not yet have a world record for tunnel length.

The Lærdal Tunnel in Norway is longer at 24.5 km, but that's a single tube tunnel. China will keep this record for about 5 years, the Boknafjord Tunnel in Norway is under construction as a 26.5 kilometer long tunnel, which is a twin-tube tunnel.

[Chris]

China opened its first 12 lane expressway, a section of G3 between Qihe and Jinan in Shandong province.

China is rebuilding older expressways on a massive scale, often expanding them straight from 4 to 8 lanes across hundreds of kilometers. However, wider than 8 lanes is still very rare, they only recently opened a 10 lane section of G1 in Liaoning province which was said to be the first 10 lane expressway in China.

[Jhoan Seb]

This month, a number of Chinese and Indian outlets were discussing the creation of a highway in Shaksgam Valley. The news was somewhat controversial because this area is disputed between China and India.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/exclusive-satellite-imagery-shows-china-rapid-infrastructure-push-shaksgam-valley-2851910-2026-01-14

IndiaToday published an article using Vantor imagery showing how China had built tunnels and paved the area it controls in this valley. The region is quite remote, according to the imagery and some reports, the Chinese had begun construction between 2024 and 2025. (https://www.oneindia.com/india/china-building-road-in-occupied-kashmir-near-siachen-satellite-images-show-3809421.html <- The new route is connected to the G219)

[kphoger]

The news was somewhat controversial because this area is disputed

Interesting dynamic.

On the one hand, "possession is nine-tenths the law".
On the other hand, "free highway!"

[Plutonic Panda]

Pretty simple solution in my opinion. Let them build the highway and then be like oh that's our land.

[andrepoiy]

China opened its first 12 lane expressway, a section of G3 between Qihe and Jinan in Shandong province.

China is rebuilding older expressways on a massive scale, often expanding them straight from 4 to 8 lanes across hundreds of kilometers. However, wider than 8 lanes is still very rare, they only recently opened a 10 lane section of G1 in Liaoning province which was said to be the first 10 lane expressway in China.

I'm surprised about that freeway expansion is going on given how fast they usually built transit