A 36-kilometer bridge, the world's longest sea-spanning structure, will soon open to traffic, an official in the eastern province of Zhejiang said on Tuesday.

The bridge, spanning Hangzhou Bay near Shanghai, will cut the length of the road trip from Shanghai to Ningbo, a busy port in Zhejiang, by 120 km. It is designed to last 100 years.

The bridge is a cable-stayed structure built at a cost of 11.8 billion yuan (1.64 billion U.S. dollars), according to Xue Zhen'an, deputy director of Zhejiang Provincial Traffic Bureau.

Construction of the six-lane bridge, which will have a speed limit of 100 km per hour, began in November 2003 and ended in June 2007, Xu said.

The bridge would boost economic integration and development in the Yangtze River Delta, which covers almost 100,000 sq km encompassing Shanghai, Zhejiang and Jiangsu and is home to 72.4 million people, he added.

   

(Xinhua News Agency February 27, 2008)