On the morning of the 29th, as the cutterhead of the 8.8-meter-diameter “Tiebing No.1” earth pressure balance shield machine began to rotate, the first shield tunneling was launched on Guangzhou Rail Transit Lines 18 and 22——the fastest-designed subway lines in China.
With a design speed of 160 km/h, Guangzhou Rail Transit Lines 18 and 22 have a total length of 93.7 kilometers. The project, contracted by China Railway Construction South China Construction Co., Ltd. with an investment of 76 billion yuan, is currently the largest single project in China constructed under the EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) model. The project boasts multiple national firsts——the largest single-contract subway project in China, the first subway line designed with a large cross-section diameter of 8.8 meters across the entire line, the first subway line in the industry to adopt a 27.5 kV rigid overhead catenary system, and the first subway project to implement full-process digital handover using BIM new technology, among others.
Zhang Cheng, Chairman and Party Secretary of China Railway Construction South China Construction Co., Ltd., stated that the “Tiebing No.1” shield machine used for this launch was “tailor-made” to adapt to Guangzhou's special geological conditions and the 160 km/h design speed, and it took only 25 days from rollout to completion of all debugging.
According to the plan, Guangzhou Rail Transit Lines 18 and 22 will respectively begin trial operations by the end of December 2020 and the end of December 2022. Once completed, traveling by subway from the Nansha New Area of the Guangdong Free Trade Zone to downtown Guangzhou will take only 30 minutes.