Chinanews, Hangzhou, Dec. 19 – The world's longest cross-sea bridge, the Cross-Sea Bridge at Hangzhou Bay, has become a hot tourist spot before construction is completed. As tourists keep coming to visit the new bridge from neighboring regions, builders always fear for their safety.
The bridge will extend 36 kilometers on Hangzhou Bay. When completed, it will become the longest cross-sea bridge in the world, longer than the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in the United States and Baharian Causeway in Saudi Arabia. It will shorten the distance from Ningbo to Shanghai by 120 kilometers and will play a significant role in the social and economic development of the Yangtze River Delta Region. Construction of the bridge started in 2003 and is scheduled to be completed in 2008.
Construction of the bridge has now entered into the final stage. As the two towers on the bridge, the bridge's landmark buildings, have been connected to each other, the bridge is beginning to take shape. The fantastic scene has attracted lots of people to visit it every day. Some people traveled across the bridge from its starting point, Haiyan in Jiaxing, and many others went there from the neighboring regions of Shanghai and Jiangsu. Some travel agencies even organized tours to visit the bridge.
Some people might think that it is a good thing for the bridge to generate economic profits even before the construction is finished. However, as the old saying goes, one's man's meat is another man's poison, the booming tourist activities have in fact become the biggest headache for the builders of the bridge. Information shows that every day, some 50-60 people, mostly 100, have visited the site on average. On weekends, it becomes even busier as tour buses packed full with visitors shuttle back and forth on the bridge, blocking the way of engineering trucks and seriously impeding the construction process.
Wang Zhi'an, construction manager of the cross-sea bridge, said that with so many people coming to visit the bridge every day, he is much concerned about tourists safety. When they are already very busy with the construction work, they have to allocate somebody to send helmets to visitors who climb on the bridge for sightseeing. The construction site is filled with construction materials. "If visitors happen to be trapped inside, who should be responsible for the accident?" he said.
