ASIA: Work has been completed on a 2·2 km bridge across the River Amur connecting Tongjiang in China’s Heilongjiang province with Nizhneleninskoe station in Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
The two governments signed an agreement to build the bridge in October 2008, and a groundbreaking ceremony was held in 2014. Main construction works began in 2016 with each country responsible for its section of the bridge; 309 m of the structure is in Russia.
The bridge is intended to provide a much shorter rail route between the regions, with a greater capacity than the existing ships and a seasonal pontoon road crossing.
It carries a single-track railway with gauntletted 1 520 and 1 435 mm gauge tracks so that each country’s freight trains can run to the other side, and has a design capacity of up to 21 million tonnes/year.
