At the Jingqing Expressway construction site, the paver is carrying out the final pavement work. The road is 39.24 kilometers long and is scheduled to open to traffic this month. It is a shared section of the S36 Xuancheng–Dongzhi Expressway and the S40 Ningguo–Zongyang Expressway, starting from Huangcun Town in Jing County and ending at the border between Jing County and Qingyang County. Once open, there will be an additional two-way, four-lane expressway corridor between Jing County and Qingyang.

Meanwhile, there is now definite news about the “eastern gateway” of the S40 Expressway—the Ningguo–Jing County section. On June 30, the Xuancheng Public Resources Trading Center released a pre-announcement of the tender documents for the concessionaire of this section. The project has an estimated total investment of 6.424 billion yuan and a route length of about 43.15 kilometers. It starts on the northeast side of Lianhe Village, Wangxi Subdistrict, Ningguo City, connects to the S05 Xuantong Expressway, and runs westward, passing beneath the Xuanji High-Speed Railway, crossing over the Shuiyang River and the Wangan Railway, passing through northern Gangkou Town in Ningguo City, southern Huangdu Township in Xuanzhou District, southern Xintian Town, southern Zhouwang Town, northern Caicun Town in Jing County, and southern Jing County Development Zone, and finally connecting to the existing Xuanjing Expressway near Panjiadian in Qinxi Town, Jing County.

The road will be built to two-way, four-lane standards, with a design speed of 120 kilometers per hour and a subgrade width of 27 meters. The entire line will include 1 grand bridge, 15 major bridges, 1 medium tunnel, as well as 5 interchanges, 1 open service area, and 4 toll stations. According to the announcement, the project is expected to start construction in December 2026, with a construction period of 3 years.

The entire S40 Ningguo–Zongyang Expressway is being built in several sections. After the Jingqing Expressway opens to traffic this month, the other sections are also progressing.

Construction of the advance section of the Chizhou section began in September 2025, and the entire line has now entered the substantive construction stage. The Chizhou section is about 46 kilometers long, with a total investment of more than 10.4 billion yuan. This year has been designated the “year of tackling key challenges at the start.” Excavation of the left and right tubes of the Fenghuangshan Tunnel has begun simultaneously, and portal construction at the Yunguanshan Tunnel and Jimushan Tunnel is also being accelerated. For bridge pile foundations, more than 51% of the piles in the advance section have been completed cumulatively. The substructure of Jiuhua River Bridge No. 1 in the Guichi section is expected to be completed in mid-May, and pile foundation construction for the Ning'an Tongjiu Grand Bridge has been fully completed and is now shifting to substructure construction. This section is scheduled to be completed and open to traffic in 2028.