Xinjiang's first desert expressway under construction, the S21 Altay-Urumqi Expressway, has successfully introduced new technologies and equipment including unmanned intelligent paving and rolling cluster equipment. Experts say this is the first time in the history of expressway construction in the autonomous region.

On July 31, an observation event on intelligent equipment operations for pavement construction and a technical exchange meeting on the promotion and application of pavement construction technology for the S21 Altay-Urumqi Expressway were held in the heart of the Gurbantunggut Desert. At the construction site, rumbling unmanned intelligent rolling cluster equipment carried out stable paving on the road surface; the originally gray sandy road was quickly replaced by asphalt, becoming a "black" ribbon running through the heart of the desert.

Last year, in order to complete the construction task to high standards, Shanxi Road & Bridge Group spent nearly 10 million yuan to purchase unmanned intelligent paving and rolling cluster equipment, and used it for the first time in Xinjiang's highway transportation infrastructure construction market. The third contract section of the Altay-Urumqi Expressway undertaken by Shanxi Road & Bridge Group has a total length of 33.5 kilometers, located in Altay Prefecture in the heart of the Gurbantunggut Desert. Because there is basically no human habitation within dozens of kilometers, the introduction of the new technology and equipment is of great significance, laying a technical foundation for completion in October 2021.

Wei Zhenxun, deputy chief engineer of Xinjiang Communications Investment (Group) Co., Ltd. and general manager of Xinjiang Jiaotou Construction Management Co., Ltd., said that this is a vivid practice by the Altay-Urumqi Expressway construction management unit, supervision units, and participating construction units working together with intelligent manufacturing as the driving force to promote the high-quality development of Xinjiang's transportation infrastructure construction industry through practical actions.

The S21 Altay-Urumqi Expressway construction project is an important part of the autonomous region's "6 horizontal, 6 vertical, 8 corridor" backbone road network under the 13th Five-Year Plan, and is the most important convenient channel for communication between Urumqi and northern Xinjiang. During project construction, the Altay-Urumqi Expressway construction unit proposed the goal of building a "five-new system": new construction financing models, new business forms integrating transportation and tourism, new development through military-civilian coordination, new smart travel experiences, and new fields of super expressways. Technologies and processes such as straw checkerboard sand-fixing slope protection engineering, aeolian sand settlement observation points, and prefabricated steel plate composite beam cross-line bridge construction are all firsts in the history of expressway construction in the autonomous region.

Yushanjiang Yibulayin, quality and safety director of Xinjiang Communications Investment (Group) Co., Ltd., said that the new technologies and equipment introduced in the third contract section of the Altay-Urumqi Expressway by Shanxi Road & Bridge Group have set a precedent in the history of expressway construction in the autonomous region and made positive contributions to promoting the implementation of the innovation-led and intelligent-manufacturing-driven concept in the construction of highway transportation infrastructure in the autonomous region.