Cross-border bridge connecting Russia & China to open in 2020

The construction of a long-awaited bridge across the Amur River, aimed at connecting Russia’s Far East city of Blagoveshchensk with the northeastern Chinese city of Heihe, will be completed next year.

The bridge will be ready for traffic this year, according to the head of Amur Region, Vasily Orlov. He told journalists that construction works are on schedule, with a temporary border checkpoint to be launched soon. A permanent checkpoint will start working in summer 2020, Orlov said.

Construction of the cross-border bridge officially started in 2016, following 28 years of negotiations between Russia and China. The new bridge and its corresponding infrastructure will cost more than $300 million and will be 19.9km long. Some 6.5km of the bridge and road junctions will lie in China, and the remaining 13.5km in Russia, according to China’s CNS agency. The length of the main suspension bridge will be roughly 1,300 meters and its width 14.5 meters.

Traffic capacity is expected to exceed three million tons of cargoes and reach 1.48 million people a year by 2020.

The bridge will greatly facilitate trade between the two countries, since the route will be roughly 3,500km shorter. By 2020, cargo turnover is expected to increase 10-fold, from 300,000 to three million metric tons.

After the completion of the road bridge, which will be an impressive engineering masterpiece, a railroad bridge will be erected next to it.

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