At 16:00 on December 28, with the sound of an explosion, the right tube of the Gongde Tunnel on the Shijiazhuang section of the Xifu Expressway was holed through three months ahead of schedule, becoming the first of the five tunnels on the Shijiazhuang section of the Xifu Expressway to be completed.
The Gongde Tunnel is being built by the No. 1 Branch of Contract Section 1 of the Shijiazhuang section of the Xifu Expressway under China State Construction Engineering Corporation. The tunnel portal is located north of Gongde Village, Chenzhuang Town, Lingshou County, and the exit is located east of Yuquanzhuang, Chenzhuang Town, Lingshou County. With a total length of about 813 meters and a total cost of 80.34 million yuan, it is a key controlling project of the Xifu Expressway.
Construction of the right tube of the Gongde Tunnel began on October 9, 2016. The tunnel site area features a karst-denuded low-mountain peak-cluster landscape, with large variations in natural mountain slope and relatively strong surface erosion. Because the exit is a sheer cliff, a single-end tunneling method was adopted, and it took 421 days to achieve breakthrough of the right tube.
The breakthrough of the right tube of the Gongde Tunnel has laid a solid foundation for the opening of the Shijiazhuang section of the Xifu Expressway to traffic at the end of 2018.
Up to now, the Shijiazhuang section of the Xifu Expressway has completed a cumulative investment of 2.33 billion yuan, accounting for 68% of the total investment.