At just past 5 a.m., when the sky had just turned light, Ren Li, who lives in the Industrial New City of Dachang Hui Autonomous County in Langfang, Hebei, wiped her face and set out early with her husband, embarking on a two-hour commute that crosses Beijing and Hebei.

As usual, the couple first drove to Lucheng Station in Tongzhou, Beijing, then transferred to the subway to get to work. The straight-line distance from their doorstep to the subway station is less than 10 kilometers, but because they have to detour via the Friendship Bridge, the actual route is long and has many traffic lights, making the one-way trip take 40 to 50 minutes—the biggest headache in the couple's commute.

"If the 'Changtong Bridge' were completed, we could sleep a bit longer every day—how wonderful that would be." Pulling up at the station, she glanced at her watch: exactly 6:30, and a long line had already formed at the subway entrance. Ren Li, in the passenger seat, rubbed her sleepy eyes and again mentioned her "little wish" to her husband.

The "Changtong Bridge" Ren Li refers to is the Chaobai River Bridge on the Changtong Road. On one end of the bridge is Tongzhou District, Beijing; on the other end is Dachang County, Hebei.

This bridge standing right at their "doorstep" broke ground in December 2022, and Ren Li has passed by it every day since, witnessing the entire construction process: last September, the bridge fully entered the superstructure construction phase; in January this year, the first steel box girder segment of the main bridge was successfully hoisted; and on May 6, as the last steel girder was smoothly placed and precisely connected, after a year and a half of construction, the main bridge was perfectly closed, launching the final sprint toward its official opening in mid-September.

The wish to "sleep a little longer every morning" is about to come true. And this is not just the "little wish" of Ren Li and her husband, but the shared wish of more than 300,000 commuters who shuttle like the tide between Beijing and the three northern counties of Langfang.

The bridge spans the sky, connecting Beijing and Hebei. As a key transportation link between Tongzhou District and Dachang County, the Chaobai River Bridge, built by CCCC Road & Bridge Construction Co., Ltd., has a total length of 1,631.5 meters and is designed with six lanes in both directions. Once completed, the entire 7.9-kilometer Changtong Road will open to traffic, at which point the distance from Dachang County, Hebei, to the core area of Beijing's sub-center will be shortened to 5 kilometers and the drive time cut by nearly half an hour, rewriting the history of there being only one two-lane road between the two places. It will truly become a new fast channel for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei "one-hour commuting circle," effectively alleviating congestion for commuters entering Beijing from Yanjiao and Dachang in Hebei and greatly facilitating the work and life of two-place commuters like Ren Li.

The "acceleration" of transportation integration keeps building people's "roads to happiness." Over the past decade, cross-provincial commuters—the "Ren Lis"—have made wish after wish, and as project after project has been completed and road after road extended, those wishes have gradually come true: point-to-point "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei customized express buses" have emerged, cross-border bus routes have continued to increase, and the situation of buses packed like sardine cans has been eased; with the Chaobai River Bridge on Changtong Road about to open, "sleeping a little longer every morning" is no longer a luxury. Looking to the future, Ren Li has made a new wish: that Beijing Subway Line 22 will soon pass by her doorstep, making the dream of "commuting to and from work by subway" a reality.