On the morning of June 26, reporters saw workers who wearing safety helmets were carefully "weaving" steel mesh arrays on Dianjun construction site of Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge, whose bearing platform has begun to take shape.

 “From 2009 when the project approved to November 18, 2012 the project started, until now all the pile foundations are poured successfully before the flood season come so as to secure the bearing platform in the main flood season; each step is not easy.”

　Standing on steel pipe lines to watch the surging river, Yuan Qinghua, Director of Bridge Construction Office, said that the construction of Miaozui Bridge is at the forefront either in approval speed or construction progress among so many bridges along the Yangtze River, which is helping to create "Yichang speed."

On the construction site, Mr. Yuan said, “It only spent 20 months approving the whole project.While the other bridges of the same scale usually takes 36 to 60 months or even longer. It took only one month from the project started to the first pile foundation excavation, and just 7 months to poure all 58 piles foundation successfully ...”

　　“With strong support of various departments, Miaozui Bridge produces such high efficiency.”Pointing at a patrol boat near the bearing platform, he told reporters that the boat is specially equipped for the protection of bridge construction by the Three Gorges Navigation Authority.

　　At the end of March this year, in order to improve efficiency of navigation during the construction of bridge and secure both the construction and navigation, the Three Gorges Navigation Authority had established Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge Construction Navigation Safety Headquarters to protect the bridge navigation safety.Mr. Yuan said that in 2009, Yichang Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government decided to set up a Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge Leading Group, so the project was officially launched.

　　On June 28, 2012, National Development and Reform Commission officially approved to build Yichang Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge.

　　The preparation of Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge project lasted for three years, completing 17 provincial approvals and 3 state approvals successively and gathered the wisdom and efforts of all parties.

Leaders of Provincial Party Committee and Government attach great importance to Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge Construction, Li Hongzhong, Secretary of Provincial Party Committee, and Wang Guosheng, Governor of Hubei Province, came to do surveys for several times, and listed the bridge as a provincial key construction project in "Twelfth-Five Plan ".

Huang Chuping, a Member of Provincial Standing Committee and Party Secretary of Yichang led other officials to do surveys on the construction site, and proposed to build a national first-class bridge across the river.

　　Although it is the sixth Yangtze River Bridge to be built in Yichang, the city had no other Yangtze River Bridge constructions in the past 10 years, while the national approval procedures had major changes. More stringent construction procedures led to more difficult project construction work.

According to the planning of Yichang Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, the Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-rural Development (MCHUD) is responsible for preliminary work of the bridge project. To promote the construction, the MCHUD and theMunicipal Development and Reform Commission formed a special group to investigate 9 similar bridge constructions, went and back from Beijing toWuhan for many times, coordinated more than 80 units, held meetings for about 100 times, and completed some great and significant provincial examinations and approvals, whose speed surpassed far more than other similar projects in the progress.

 “In the preliminary preparation process of the project, some relevant departments, with great efforts, cooperate with each other to make the project get a breakthrough.” Yuan Qinghua also said that they continue the tradition of closely working with the relevant departments, and especially get the support from the Housing Management Office of Xinling District and Dianjun District, which ensured the progress of the construction.  

At the end of the interview, Mr. Yuan showed the reporters a piece of weather information from the Meteorological Department and expressed that the department sends messages to all project leaders involved in the construction each week, reminding them to pay attention to the weather changes so as to make overall arrangements. 

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As the city construction project with the greatest investment of 2.75 Billion RMB so far in Yichang, Miaozui Yangtz River Bridge, is located at 2,700 meters away from the downstream of the Gezhouba Water Control Project，and links the Zhenzhu Road of Xiling District in the north to the Second Dongyue Road in the south which is about 3234.7 meters in length, consisting of the Great River Bridge, Sanjiang Bridge, the north and south approach bridges. 

The six-lane highway in both directions on the bridge will be put into operation at the end of 2015, which is a river-spanning bridge with the widest bridge floor and the most lanes, and it is also the second grand bridge combining steel plate with beam suspension cable. The piers of both the Great Bridge and the Sanjiang Bridge are not built in the water without affecting Chinese sturgeons’ migration to protect the surroundings and meet the shipping need of stem stream of the Yangtze River.

After the construction of the bridge, it is to form the internal traffic recycle of central city with Yiling Yangtze Bridge recently and build the major cycle of road junction of Yichang City with Wujiagang Yangtze River Bridge in future, to form a new passageway and new landscape, linking the north and south part of the Yangtze River and the West Island togtther.

With the river-spanning development strategy, Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge will make the traffic in the north and the south of the Yangtze River more convenient, enormously driving the great-leap-forward development of Dianjun District known as a back garden of Yichang. Meanwhile, the bridge will effectively change the visage of shanty towns in the West Island and benefit the people around it.

(Reporter Zhang Liang and Pei Shujing, Correspondent Xiang Changbi)