At 17:36 on July 23, pile foundation construction for the No. 5 main pier of the Taoyaomen road-rail dual-purpose bridge on the Ningbo-Zhoushan Railway was completed, marking a key breakthrough in the substructure works of the No. 5 main pier and laying a solid foundation for the subsequent transition to pile cap construction.

As one of the key projects of the Ningbo-Zhoushan Railway, the Taoyaomen road-rail dual-purpose bridge has a total length of approximately 1,531 meters, of which the combined road-rail section is 1,066 meters long, connecting Cezi Island and Fuchi Island. The main bridge adopts a hybrid box girder cable-stayed bridge with a main span of 666 meters, the world's first three-box separated hybrid girder cable-stayed bridge; the road and railway are arranged on the same level, with the railway designed as a double-track line in the middle at a design speed of 250 km/h, and the highway as a two-way six-lane expressway arranged in separate carriageways on both sides at a design speed of 100 km/h, making it the world's largest-span road-rail dual-purpose hybrid girder cable-stayed bridge; the mid-span main girder adopts a separated steel box girder, while the side-span main girder adopts a concrete box girder with a width of 66 meters, the world's widest separated concrete box girder.

The Taoyaomen road-rail dual-purpose bridge has two main piers, No. 5 and No. 6. The No. 5 main pier uses 20 super-large-diameter bored piles with a diameter of 3.5 meters, with pile lengths ranging from 24 to 48 meters, and the pile bottoms are embedded in slightly weathered rock strata. Because the No. 5 main pier is located in the mountain-sea boundary area, where the sea area is wide, the flood and ebb tidal currents at the bridge site are relatively strong, scouring is intense, and the seabed topography fluctuates greatly, with the deepest water depth at the bridge site exceeding 70 meters, it has hydrological and meteorological characteristics such as strong winds, high waves, deep water, and rapid currents, as well as complex geological characteristics such as bare rock, thin overburden, inclined rock, and fractured rock interlayers.

The 76.4-kilometer Ningbo-Zhoushan Railway starts from Ningbo East Station in the west, passes through Yinzhou District and Beilun District of Ningbo, and reaches Jintang Island and Zhoushan Main Island in Zhoushan via the newly built Jintang subsea tunnel and newly built sea-crossing bridges, ending at Baiquan Town in Dinghai District. It has seven stations: Ningbo East, Yunlong, Qiu'ai, Beilun West, Jintang, Ma'ao, and Zhoushan, with a design speed of 250 km/h. It is a high-speed railway mainly serving medium- and long-distance tourist passenger flows while also accommodating intercity passenger flows between Zhoushan and Ningbo, and is also intended to build Zhejiang Province's "1-hour traffic circle" and form a convenient passenger transport corridor between the mainland and Zhoushan Island.

After the project is completed, it will end the history of the Zhoushan Islands having no railway access, and Zhoushan, a prefecture-level city in the Yangtze River Delta that currently has no high-speed rail access, will join the national railway network. It is of great significance for improving the railway network layout, promoting tourism development along the route, realizing the integrated and same-city development of Ningbo and Zhoushan, and accelerating the deep integration of Zhoushan and Ningbo into the "Belt and Road" and the Yangtze River Economic Belt development.