July 23, according to Haixi Morning Post: After two and a half years of construction, Jiuxi Bridge is planned to achieve full opening to traffic in October this year.

Rendering of Jiuxi Bridge.

The reporter learned that in July 2021, during the second-quarter guidance service assessment inspection of key construction projects in Xiamen, the Jiuxi Bridge of the Binhai East Avenue (Xiang'an East Road - Lianhe Section) project received a high score.

Xiang'an Jiuxi Bridge is an important controlling project of the Xiamen Binhai East Avenue project. Once completed, it will greatly shorten the travel time from western Xiang'an to the island and Xiamen's new airport.

It is understood that the Binhai East Avenue (Xiang'an East Road - Lianhe Section) project is located in the eastern part of Xiang'an District and leads to Nan'an, Quanzhou. Its starting point connects with the under-construction Binhai East Avenue (Aotou - Dadeng Bridge Section), and it intersects with Xiang'an East Road, Wangdeng North Road, Xidong Road, etc. along the route, ending at the coastal corridor on the east side of Lianhe Village at the border between Xiamen and Quanzhou. The total length is about 8.7 kilometers, with a road width of 60 meters, designed as a first-class highway and urban expressway. The project route crosses the Jiuxi River; therefore, Jiuxi Bridge has become one of the controlling projects of the entire line. The bridge has a total length of 498 meters and 13 spans, designed as two parallel decks, with a maximum width of 51 meters. The entire bridge consists of five continuous box girder units, crossing the Jiuxi River basin channel.

According to the planning and design, Jiuxi Bridge is located on a curve with a radius of 800 meters. It is both a curved bridge and a sloped bridge, belonging to a prestressed reinforced concrete continuous girder bridge with relatively high construction difficulty. Relevant personnel from the Quality and Safety Brigade of the Municipal Transportation Law Enforcement Detachment, which supervises bridge construction quality, introduced that what makes this bridge different from other bridges is that every reinforcing bar in structures such as cross beams, webs, and tooth blocks has a different bent shape and size.

To ensure the precise processing and fabrication and accurate installation of the bridge structural reinforcement, at the start of the project, the construction unit built a 2,000-square-meter standardized centralized steel bar processing plant beside Jiuxi Bridge. For the steel bar protective layer, after multiple discussions, equal-strength precast spacer blocks were ultimately adopted, fixed by tying with a "double-wire, two-way" process at the density required by specifications, to the greatest extent avoiding corrosion of steel bars in the marine environment and ensuring structural durability.

At present, the right deck of Jiuxi Bridge has been fully opened to traffic, and the left deck is undergoing reinforcement tying construction for the final unit, with about 85% of the engineering work completed. It is reported that the entire bridge is expected to open to traffic in October.