At 9:00 on November 11, at the construction site of the Liuhe Town section in Taicang City of the Shanghai Grand Bridge on the newly built Shanghai-Nanjing-Hefei High-Speed Railway, a rotary drilling rig started its drill bit to bore the first pile, marking that the Shanghai-Nanjing section of the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hefei High-Speed Railway has entered the substantive construction stage.

The first pile foundation drilled is Pile No. 7 of Pier No. 741 of the Shanghai Grand Bridge, with a designed pile length of 56 meters and a pile diameter of 1 meter, constructed using the positive circulation drilling method. The project construction management unit, the Shanghai-Hangzhou Passenger Dedicated Line Company, has adhered to grasping both project construction and epidemic prevention and control, made scientific plans and vigorously advanced the work, and made full preparations for the drilling of the first pile.

The construction unit, China Railway 24th Bureau Group, organized elite forces to establish a project department, worked hard to overcome the adverse effects of the epidemic and restricted access of machinery, materials and equipment, optimized and improved the construction plan and resource allocation, promptly carried out site clearing at the first construction point, strictly controlled the quality of raw materials and construction techniques and other links, and smoothly achieved the drilling of the first pile.

The Shanghai-Nanjing-Hefei High-Speed Railway is an important component of the Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu High-Speed Railway. The Shanghai-Nanjing section starts from the newly built Shanghai Baoshan Station in the Shanghai hub, runs westward through Suzhou, Nantong, Taizhou, Yangzhou and Nanjing cities in Jiangsu Province, and ends at the boundary between Jiangsu and Anhui provinces; the newly built line is 416 kilometers long, with a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour.

The Shanghai-Nanjing section of the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hefei High-Speed Railway has 12 stations in total: Shanghai Baoshan, Taicang, Chongming, Qidongxi, Haimenbei, Nantong, Rugao Xi, Huangqiao, Taizhounan, Yangzhoudong, Yizhengbei and Nanjingbei. Among them, Shanghai Baoshan, Chongming, Qidongxi, Haimenbei, Rugao Xi, Huangqiao, Taizhounan, Yizhengbei and Nanjingbei stations are newly built stations, while Taicang, Nantong and Yangzhoudong stations are reconstructed and expanded stations.

The Shanghai-Nanjing-Hefei High-Speed Railway is an important component of the riverside corridor in the "eight vertical and eight horizontal" national medium- and long-term railway network plan. It is a fast direct channel between the riverside cities north of the Yangtze River and the Nanjing metropolitan area and the Shanghai metropolitan area, and undertakes the transport of main network passenger flows along the riverside corridor and part of the direct passenger flows to Shanghai from the coastal and Beijing-Shanghai corridors.

After the project is completed, it will be of great significance for optimizing the layout of the railway network in the Yangtze River region, serving the coordinated development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and promoting high-quality integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta.