On June 18, the Dabie Mountain Tunnel on the Hefei–Wuhan section of the Shanghai–Chongqing–Chengdu High-Speed Railway (referred to as the "Yangtze River Coastal High-Speed Railway") entered main tunnel construction. As the longest tunnel and a controlling project on the entire line, this marks a solid step forward in the project's construction.

The Dabie Mountain Tunnel has a total length of 14,698 meters. It is constructed and managed by Yangtze River Coastal Railway Group Co., Ltd., designed by China Railway Fourth Survey and Design Institute, and built by China Railway 18th Bureau Group. The tunnel's geological conditions are complex, passing through multiple fault fracture zones and other unfavorable geology, with rugged and complex terrain and numerous cliffs and steep slopes, making construction highly difficult.

According to reports, the Dabie Mountain Tunnel connects Hubei and Anhui provinces, passing through numerous sensitive areas including the Shizifeng Provincial Forest Park and Shizifeng Provincial Nature Reserve in Hubei, the Tianma*** Nature Reserve and the Giant Salamander Provincial Nature Reserve in Anhui. In view of the excellent natural environment of the Dabie Mountain area, the design team fully demonstrated in the preliminary environmental impact assessment report and adopted measures such as reducing inclined shaft exits and adding sewage pump stations to minimize the tunnel's impact on the environment.

The Dabie Mountain Tunnel faces unfavorable geological conditions such as high ground stress, high ground temperature, harmful gases, and dangerous rockfalls, and the construction team has taken corresponding engineering measures. Since entering the site, they have successively completed the relocation of the road above the tunnel, the construction of access roads, the excavation and construction of the tunnel portal site, and the installation of portal anchoring pile protection, laying a solid foundation for entering main tunnel construction.

The Hefei–Wuhan section is one of the seven projects of the Yangtze River Coastal High-Speed Railway, located in Anhui and Hubei provinces, with a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour, a total length of 330.1 kilometers of newly built main line, a construction period of 4.5 years, and an estimated total investment of 79.25 billion yuan. The line starts at Hefei South Station in Anhui Province in the east, passes through Lu'an North, Jinzhai East, Nanxi, Macheng North, Hong'an, and Yangtze River New Area, and ends at Wuhan Tianhe Station, with a bridge-tunnel ratio as high as 88.6%.