(November 30,2019) The cost of the project was $295 million. The bridge is 1,080 meters long, 540 meters in each country. The bridge is to be launched in April next year and should be open for passenger traffic in the middle of 2021.
Russia's minister for Far East and Arctic development estimated that freight traffic would be about 4 million metric tons annually plus 2 million Chinese tourists.
The bridge will connect the city of Blagoveshchensk on the Russia side to Heihe in northeastern China. It is intended to increase the volume of freight traffic including agricultural products between the two countries. Vasily Orlov, governor of the Amur region said: “We are forming a new international transport corridor. It will allow us to fully reach our transit potential.”
Relations between Russia and China are warming
In the past mutual wariness and Russian worries about expanding Chinese influence in the far east of Russia which is sparsely populated but rich in minerals held back development of more connections between the two countries. However, after Russian relations with the west turned sour and sanctions were imposed upon it relations with China became more important and improved. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov hailed the special relationship between China and Russia in October. Russian president Putinj also spoke of his strong working relationship with China's President Xi Jinping.
On Monday presidents of the two countries are to announce the "Power of Siberia" natural gas pipeline. A 30=year, $400 billion deal. The history of the deal is described by Wikipedia:"On 29 October 2012 president Vladimir Putin instructed the general manager of Gazprom to start the construction of the pipeline.[1] On 21 May 2014, Russia and China signed a 30-year gas deal worth $400 billion which was needed to make the project feasible. Construction was launched on 1 September 2014 in Yakutsk by president Putin and Chinese deputy premier minister Zhang Gaoli.[2][3] Construction of the connecting pipeline in China started in June 2015.[4]On 4 September 2016, Gazprom's Chairman Alexey Miller and China National Petroleum Corporation's Chairman Wang Yilin signed an agreement to build a crossing under the Amur River for the pipeline.[5] Two tunnels under the river were completed by China Petroleum Pipeline in March 2019. The pipeline was filled with gas in October 2019.[7] Deliveries to China are to start on 2 December 2019.[8]"
History of the bridge
Construction of the bridge was by a Russo-Chinese company. It involved building 20 km of new roads. In October 2018 construction was completed on the Chinese side. However the Russian side took longer and was much more expensive costing around 13.6 billion roubles or $213 million compared to just 5.2 billion roubles for the Chinese side.
First published in the Digital Journal
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