WORK on the main structure of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Corridor, including the tunnel and the bridge, will start in November, according to a meeting on promoting the construction of the Guangdong expressway Wednesday.

    The auxiliary road projects of the corridor’s Shenzhen section will start in May.

    A key project in Guangdong Province, the 24-km corridor includes a 7.1-km tunnel in the east, a 16.9-km bridge in the west, and an artificial island in the middle of the Pearl River connecting the two sections.

    The corridor starts at the Airport Overpass, which is an interchange overpass on the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Riverside Expressway, touches land on Ma’an Island in Zhongshan and ends at the Hengmen Overpass, an interchange overpass on the Zhongshan-Kaiping Expressway and the Zhongshan Eastern Outer-ring Expressway.

    The new eight-lane road will have a speed limit of 100 kilometers per hour.

    Shenzhen started work on the Sanwei Overpass, part of the Airport Overpass in December 2015. The road linking the Sanwei Overpass and the Hezhou Overpass began at the end of 2016 and will be finished in 2019.

    Construction of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Corridor was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission in December 2015 after years of changes in its construction plan.

    It’s hoped that the 42.4-billion-yuan (US$6.18 billion) project, which will link the two economic circles in the Pearl River Delta region, will improve the area’s economy.

    It currently takes Shenzhen drivers two to three hours to reach Zhongshan via the often-congested Humen Bridge. After the corridor’s completion in 2020, the trip to Zhongshan from Shenzhen will be cut to 30 minutes.

    Guangdong will invest 86.5 billion yuan in expressways in 2017, including seven new expressways running 445 kilometers.

    Renovation of the Shenzhen section of the Huizhou-Yantian Expressway and the western expansion project of the Shenzhen-Shantou Expressway will start this year.

    (Han Ximin)