Construction of the bridge, which will span the Amur River and link the Russian settlement of Nizhneleninskoye, in the Jewish Autonomous Region, to the Chinese city of Tongjiang, has already begun on the Chinese side and is roughly two-thirds complete, officials told The Siberian Times. China is on schedule to finish its portion of the bridge by November, but on the Russian side, construction is yet to begin.
The bridge is being built through public-private partnerships, with private investment from both sides amounting to about six billion rubles ($12 million). The plan calls for the bridge to eventually become part of an extension of the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway.
Lin Yonghan, a project manager at the China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group, said China had already completed 65 percent of the bridge on its side. The Beijing government has invested 1.6 billion yuan ($258 million) into the project so far, he added.
“Construction of the Tongjiang-Nizhneleninskoye railway bridge’s main body will be finished before the end of this year,” Mr Lin said. “We will start building its auxiliary facilities next year.”
It’s still not clear when construction work on the Russian side will begin, but President Vladimir Putin reportedly promised his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that he will try to speed things up when they met last week.
Once completed, the bridge will span some 2,215 meters. It’s designed to be able to carry an annual cargo capacity of 21 million metric tons, and officials believe it will help to boost trade, transportation and tourism between the two countries.
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