Construction History of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge

Nanjing is an important traffic stronghold, but Yangtze River cut off the communication between the south bank and north bank. To meet the demand of the development of the society and economy, the government decided to build a bridge across Yangtze River.

1956, Ministry of Railway decided to start the reconnaissance and design work of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge.

1957, the design team of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge proposed three bridge sites to Ministry of Railway.

1958, Ministry of Railway decided the site to build Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge and planed to build the bridge with railway and expressway.

1959, the location survey of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge was atarted in January and finished in June. The Ministry of Railway approved the design project proposed by the design team.

1960, Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge was started to be built in January.

1967, Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge was linked up on August 15.

1968, the lower-deck railway was completed and opened to traffic on September 30. More than 50000 soldiers and civilians held a solemn opening ceremony to celebrate the big success. The upper-deck expressway was also opened to traffic on December 29 of the same year.

It was really a great difficulty to build a bridge over the river since the river here is pretty wide and the water here runs rapidly. What worse, the Soviet Union withdrew their bridge experts and technicians. The Chinese people spent 8 years and invested 0.18 billion RMB in the construction of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. Half a million of cement and one million of steels were consumed in the construction. The successful construction of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge greatly promoted the economy development and also proved that Chinese people could overcome the difficulties and achieve our objective with hard-working.