Guangdong’s Huangmaohai Cross-Sea Passage, world’s largest three-tower cable-stayed highway bridge, opens to traffic, cutting travel time between Zhuhai and Jiangmen to 30 minutes

ZHUHAI, China, Dec. 13, 2024 /Xinhua-AsiaNet/–

The Huangmaohai Link, a new major cross-sea passage project in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, went into trial operation on December 11. This project, designed as a two-way, six-lane expressway with a speed limit of 100 kilometers per hour, runs about 31 kilometers from Pingsha Town in the city of Zhuhai to Doushan Town in the city of Taishan, part of Jiangmen. Upon operation, the journey time between the two cities will be reduced from more than one hour to around 30 minutes.

As the western extension of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the passage began construction in June 2020 and passed its acceptance inspection in November 2024. It encompasses two main bridges, namely the Gaolan Port Bridge and the Huangmaohai Bridge, the world’s longest three-tower cable-stayed highway design bridge. By connecting Hong Kong and Macao through the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the passage offers the impressive scenery of slender-waisted towers on the sea and flocks of gracefully flying egrets. Beyond that, it leads tourists to such attractions of Jiangmen as age-old watchtowers and eco-friendly Birds’ Paradise, a wetland park, where they can find their way to local eateries providing seafood.

Image: The Huangmaohai Cross-Sea Passage

The administration center of the Huangmaohai Link introduced that the project, overseen by Guangdong Provincial Communication Group and involving 31 organizations and nearly 10,000 workers, navigated formidable challenges, including frequent super typhoons, completing in just six years — a pace that reflects what officials call the “Huangmaohai speed”. Not merely functional, the passage incorporates striking aesthetics. Two main bridges, the Gaolan Port Bridge and the Huangmaohai Bridge, boast five cable-stayed towers, resembling slender waists rising gracefully over the sea. Beyond appearances, the project pioneers seven innovations, including the structure of the curve-faced single-pole reinforced concrete tower and aerodynamic controls for suppressing flutter and vortex-induced vibrations in split-type steel box girders. Billed as the “greenest cross-sea passage”, the project ecologically bypasses protected natural reserves and offers the sight of egrets flying in tandem with the passage, underscoring a vision of natural, humanistic, and cultural beauty.

For residents of Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR, and overseas Chinese, the passage offers the fastest route to Jiangmen via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. Together with other major routes in the Greater Bay Area, such as the Huangpu Bridge, Nansha Bridge, Humen Bridge, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link, and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, it will weave a vast network of cross-sea and cross-river connections across the Greater Bay Area. This ambitious network is poised to accelerate the region’s transformation into a world-class transportation hub, fostering deeper integration across industries, technology, culture, and tourism between the Greater Bay Area and western Guangdong.