On July 22, the Guangzhou Public Resources Trading Center released the announcement for third-party testing services for the Haizhu Bay Tunnel project. The maximum bid price (in ten thousand yuan): 32.73173112 million yuan. The construction site of this third-party testing service project for the Haizhu Bay Tunnel is located in Haizhu District and Panyu District of Guangzhou.

Geographical location map of the Haizhu Bay Tunnel on the Dongxiaonan Expressway

Project scale: The Haizhu Bay Tunnel project is the northern section of the Guangzhou South Station Expressway, connecting the existing Dongxiaonan Viaduct in the north and Nanpu Avenue in the south, with a total length of 4.35 km and a mainline design speed of 60 km/h.

It adopts a double-tube single-layer shield tunnel to pass beneath the Pearl River Rear Channel, Luoxi Island, and Sanzhixiang Waterway. The outer diameter of a single shield tunnel is 14.5 m, and the total tunnel length is 3,463 m, including a 2,077 m shield section and a 1,386 m open-cut section.

Rendering of the shield section of the Haizhu Bay Tunnel

The estimated budget for the northern section project is 5,217,117,800 yuan (excluding land use fees), of which the construction and installation engineering cost is 4,355,073,100 yuan. Planned construction period: tentatively 42 months. It is reported that in December 2020, the Haizhu Bay Tunnel project, Guangzhou's first super-large-diameter shield tunnel, had already started construction in Panyu District.

The Haizhu Bay Tunnel is a key control project of the Guangzhou South Station Expressway, a dual key project of Guangdong Province and Guangzhou City, and is currently the largest-diameter shield tunnel in Guangzhou.

The tunnel will enter from Dongxiang Village, Luopu Street, Panyu District, and exit at the Dagangwei Industrial Zone on Lijiao Road, Haizhu District. It will pass beneath the Pearl River Lijiao Waterway, Luoxi Island, Sanzhixiang Waterway, and Nanpu Avenue in the form of a double-tube shield tunnel. The surrounding environment along the route is complex, making it one of the super-large shield tunnels with relatively difficult construction conditions and construction difficulty in China at present.

The construction of this project will solve the current problem of detour routes from downtown Guangzhou to Guangzhou South Station, fill the gap of lacking a rapid corridor between the city center and Guangzhou South Station, shorten travel time and distance, and improve the travel efficiency of the Guangzhou South Station hub.

It is expected to be completed and opened in 2024. After the project is fully completed, it will effectively alleviate the detour and congestion problems for travel from downtown Guangzhou to Guangzhou South Station. At that time, driving from Haiyin Bridge in the city center to Guangzhou South Station will be shortened from 50 minutes to about 15 minutes.

This will achieve efficient interconnection of an "express corridor + high-speed railway." The Guangzhou South Station Business District, located in the western industrial belt, will be able to connect more quickly to Guangzhou's Inner Ring Road via Dongxiaonan Road, achieving rapid connections with multiple industrial clusters in Guangzhou.