On the morning of June 26th, at Dianjun construction site of the Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge, the reporter saw worker wearing safety helmets were carefully “weaving” the iron net in debars sea, and the bridge\'s platform was taking its shape.

　　"It has been hard all the way from the approval and initiation of the project in 2009 to its operation in November 18th 2012, then to the successful pouring all pile foundations before the flood season," said Yuan Qinghua, Head of the Bridge Office, standing on the pipe net and watching the surging river. Among the bridges along the Yangtze River, the construction of Miaozui Bridge, the speed and approval of the construction progress are at the forefront, which help to build the "Yichang Speed".

　　Yuan is quite familiar with the bridge. He said: "The whole project approval work only lasted a year and eight months, while it usually takes 3 to 5 years or even longer for the bridges of same scale. It took less than a month from the project came into operation to the first root pile foundation excavation. It only took seven months to successfully pour the 58 pile foundations...... " The construction of Miaozui Bridge had such a high efficiency, which is inseparable from the strong support of multiple departments." pointing to the outer cap patrolling boat, Yuan told the reporter that it was specially equipped for the protection of the bridge construction by the Three Gorges Navigation Authority. By the end of March this year, in order to improve the efficiency of navigation during construction of the bridge, the Three Gorges Navigation Authority has set up a Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge navigation security headquarter during the construction period to improve the navigation efficiency and protect the safety of navigation.

　　Yuan said that in 2009, the Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government decided to set up a leading group of Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge and the project was officially launched. On June 28th, 2012, the National Development and Reform Commission officially approved the construction of Yichang Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge. The preparation of Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge project lasted three years, completing 17 provincial approvals and 3 state approvals.

　　Leaders of Hubei Provincial Government and Provincial Party Committee attach great importance to the construction of the Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge. Li Hongzhong, Secretary of Hubei Provincial Party Committee, and Wang Guosheng, Governor of Hubei Province, has inspected the project several times in person and identified it as one of the key construction projects of the "Twelfth Five Year plan".

　　Huang Chuping, Member of the Standing Committee of Provincial Committee and Party Secretary of Yichang City, led heads of relevant departments to investigate and survey on site and proposed to build a national first-class bridge. Although the Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge is the 6th Yangtze River Bridge in Yichang, there has been great difficulty in the construction of the Miaozui Bridge as there was no such experience of building such bridges in the last 10 years and changes happened in national approval procedures and the application procedure has become more rigid.

　　According to the decision of municipal party committee and municipal government, the Bridge Project Construction Committee is in charge of the preparatory work. To promote the project construction, the Municipal Construction Committee and the Municipal Development and Reform Commission and other relevant departments formed special teams to study the construction experience of 9 similar bridges along the Yangtze River. They have been to Beijing and Wuhan many times to coordinate with more than 80 departments at all levels, and they have held over 100 meetings to complete a total of 17 provincial approvals including the project proposal, feasibility report, site planning, topographic measurements, track line measurement, geological survey, SEIS, pre-forestry land, heritage assessment, hydrology, waterways, Chinese sturgeon protection, soil and water conservation, EIA, geological disasters, mining thematic survey and land pre-approval. Meanwhile, they have obtained the examinations and approvals from the National Development and Reform Commission, land pre-trial from Ministry of Land, the approval of bridge navigation technology from the Department of Transportation.

　　“The Municipal Development and Reform Commission, the Municipal Finance Bureau, the Municipal Immigration, City Land Resources Bureau, the Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, the Municipal Planning Bureau, the Municipal Water Conservancy Bureau, the Municipal Fishery Bureau and other departments cooperated with each other and promoted the project quickly for a breakthrough at a high speed.” Yuan said that during the project construction, the departments continued to cooperate well as usual, in particular, the Housing Maintenance Station of Xiling District, Dianjun District Housing Management Bureau, to ensure the Bridge construction advanced smoothly.

　　At the end of the interview, Yuan showed the reporter a text message on weather information sent by the meteorological department in his cell phone. He said that during the construction of the bridge, every week the meteorological department sent messages to each person involved to remind them the weather changes, so that they could coordinate arrangements for various construction tasks.

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　　With the investment of 2.75 billion RMB, the Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge, so far as the city\'s largest urban construction project, it is located about 2.7 kilometers downstream of the Gezhouba Water Conservancy Project. The total length of the bridge is 3234.7m which is made up of Dajiang Bridge (connection Dianjun District and Xiba), Sanjiang Bridge (connecting Xiba and the downtown), and the approaches.

　　The two-way six-lane Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge will be open to traffic by the end of 2015. It will be a crossing river bridge with widest road and the most bridge lanes, the second large steel plate combination suspension bridge. Both of the Dajiang Bridge and Sanjiang Bridge are bridges crossing the river without piers in the river, so the migration of Chinese sturgeon will not be affected. This design can effective protect the surrounding environment and meet the needs of the Yangtze River shipping.

　　After the completion of the bridge, it will form an "internal recycle" of downtown traffic with the Yiling Yangtze River Bridge in the near future; it will further be a part of the "big recycle" of Yichang urban area road junction with Wujiagang Yangtze River Bridge. It will be a new channel and a new landscape connecting the north and south of the Yangtze River and Xiba.

　　In the across-river development strategy, Miaozui Yangtze River Bridge will facilitate the traffic in Jiangnan and greatly boost the development of Dianjun District, the "garden" of Yichang. Meanwhile, the bridge will effectively change the features of Xiba and benefit people there.(Reporter: Zhang Liang, Pei Suqian  correspondent: Xiang Changbi)