On December 31, the west-bank main tower of the Chai Buxi Grand Bridge on the Yilai Expressway—the world's widest double-sided I-beam composite girder cable-stayed bridge, invested in and built by Hubei Communications Investment and constructed by CCCC Second Harbor Engineering—was successfully capped.

The Chai Buxi Grand Bridge is located in Yichang City, Hubei Province. It is built to a standard of a two-way four-lane expressway plus a two-way two-lane Class II highway, with a design speed of 80 km/h for the expressway and 40 km/h for the Class II highway. The bridge has a total length of 904 meters, a main span of 480 meters, and a deck width of 44.5 meters. It is the first cable-stayed bridge in Hubei Province to be jointly built with an expressway and a provincial road on the same deck level, and it is currently the widest bridge of its type under construction in the world. The west-bank main tower capped this time adopts an "H"-shaped design and stands 167.2 meters tall.

Compared with conventional cable-stayed bridges, the Chai Buxi Grand Bridge features asymmetric structures in both the longitudinal side main span and the transverse deck, causing certain torsional deformation of the main tower in space and multiplying the difficulty of bridge construction. The middle and lower tower columns of the bridge adopt a variable cross-section design, continuously tapering from bottom to top, with a relatively large inclination, making overall construction very difficult. To ensure the smooth capping of the main tower, the project department actively optimized the construction organization design, innovated processes and methods, and innovatively adopted a "stepped" pouring method, creating favorable conditions for the entry of personnel and machinery and solving the difficult problem of bridge foundation construction under canyon steep-slope terrain conditions.

As a mega bridge adjacent to the Chai Buxi Scenic Area in Wufeng County, the bridge's construction imposes extremely high requirements on environmental protection and soil and water conservation. To this end, the project department fully implemented the concept of green highway construction and development, established a dedicated leading group, and incorporated green and environmental protection work into the key scope of project construction. In the design stage, the local government seized the historic opportunity of Yilai Expressway construction and proposed combining the expressway and the provincial road on the same bridge, which not only controlled construction costs but also met local traffic needs, while also saving valuable forest and land resources and reducing the environmental damage and impact of cut-and-fill slopes. In the construction stage, the project department, relying on construction milestones, actively and orderly carried out various measures such as tree replanting, grass seeding, and vine planting for revegetation, and assigned dedicated teams to clear sliding slag along slopes, playing a key role in maintaining the construction site environment and restoring soil and water at the Chai Buxi Grand Bridge.

As a major east-west transportation artery in southern Hubei Province, the Yilai Expressway is an important component of the "Five Horizontal" routes in the "Seven Vertical, Five Horizontal, Three Ring" layout of the Hubei Provincial Expressway Network Plan. The completion of the project will help improve the expressway network pattern across the entire Wuling Mountain area of Hubei Province and is of great significance for revitalizing Hubei's tourism industry, supporting the development of old revolutionary base areas, strengthening economic cooperation in the Wuling Mountain ethnic minority areas, and promoting ethnic unity.