mandag 23. mars 2026

China’s Record-Breaking Underwater Tunnel Reaches Major Milestone

The upper deck of the Yellow River tunnel in Jinan, the capital of the province of Shandong in East China, was completed on Tuesday, marking a major breakthrough for the world's largest-diameter underwater shield tunnel, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.

The upper deck of the tunnel, which is located on Huanggang Road, was finished with the pouring of the final cast-in-place roadway slab, reported the Global Times, the state-owned Chinese newspaper.

The tunnel is China's first single-bore, double-deck shield tunnel to pass beneath the Yellow River, an engineer involved in the project told the Global Times. Spanning 5.75 kilometers (around 3.6 miles), the tunnel accommodates six lanes across two levels, with a speed limit of 60 kilometers per hour (around 37 miles per hour).

About 3.3 kilometers (around 2 miles) of the tunnel were constructed using the shield tunneling method, deploying a 17.5-meter diameter (around 57 feet) tunnel-boring machine (TBM), according to Xinhua.