SOE workers toil through May Day holiday to ensure major projects progress briskly

While most people were heading to tourist attractions during the five-day May Day holiday thanks to the well-built national railway network, workers of State-owned contractors continued working on new major rail projects through the break to ensure the projects stayed on schedule.

According to China Railway 24th Bureau Group Corp Ltd (CR24), its construction team on the Wenling-Yuhuan High-speed Railway project in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, is at full throttle, boosting the progress of the project that will connect all counties and districts in Taizhou after completion.

"To keep the ambitious rail targets on track, impact drills, excavators and earthmoving vehicles are traveling back and forth on the construction site, with workers busy placing steel bars and pouring concrete," said Tang Pengfei, project manager with CR24.

With a total investment of some 7.6 billion yuan ($1.1 billion), the railway is Taizhou's first local railway project, with a newly planned length of 37.8 kilometers. The construction of bridges and tunnels accounts for 84.8 percent of the total workload, making the railway "a tough and urgent project calling for tough and urgent efforts", the manager said.

"Staying on the construction site is not compulsory, however, more than 1,000 construction workers spent the holiday on the project, enabling normal progress during the May Day holiday period. However, we still made special arrangements in shifts to ensure plenty of breaks for all of our workers," Tang said.

Currently, the overall progress of the Wenling section — the major part of the railway — has reached 23.9 percent, CR24 said.

"The overall progress has gained much momentum since the beginning of the year, thanks to recovering industrial and logistics chains. Also, with the supply of construction workers being adequate due to the optimization of the COVID-19 control measures, we are confident the whole project will be completed on schedule," Tang said.

In Zhejiang's Jiande, on the Xin'an River Bridge undertaken by the China Railway Construction Corp unit, construction of the bridge pier platforms was achieved during the holiday with the workers' voluntary dedication, laying a solid foundation for the following installation of the major bridge pile.

CR24 said on Monday that the completion of the bearing platforms and construction of the cable-stayed bridge, which is part of the Jinhua-Jiande High-speed Railway and spans 885 meters on the river, will be on a fast lane toward its operation in 2024.

"Among the piers, the No 3 and 4 main piers are being built with the deepest cofferdam reaching 37 meters, using more than 3,600 metric tons of steel and posing great challenges for our technicians and workers," said Lu Chenghua, project manager with the CR24.

Lu said the No 4 main pier, as a major headache on the list, completed many key steps before draining the cofferdam, which will start this week. After draining, construction of the main pier will start later this month.

With a designed speed of 250 kilometers per hour, the Jinhua-Jiande High-speed Railway links three cities — Jinhua, Lanxi and Jiande — with China's major railway network and aims to provide faster rail service for passengers traveling between Zhejiang and inland provinces. The line is scheduled to open before October 2025, CR24 said.

With various funding tools supporting infrastructure taking effect, including local government special bonds, many local governments are turning to major State contractors for quicker steps in infrastructure upgrading.

PowerChina RoadBridge Group Co Ltd, a unit of Power Construction Corp of China, said last month that it won an urban development project in the Shapingba district of Southwest China's Chongqing municipality, with a bid price of 4.12 billion yuan.

The project is located in the core area of Qingfeng Science and Technology City in Chongqing's Shapingba district. It includes 15 sub-projects, such as residential buildings and municipal roads, with a total construction area of about 770,000 square meters for buildings and 70,000 sq m for decoration.

As a strategic junction of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle and a prosperous place of Chongqing's metropolitan area, Shapingba district, supported by industrial clusters, a smart city and urban renewal projects, will become a window to Chongqing's next-level opening-up, said Feng Zhi, vice-president of PowerChina RoadBridge Group Co Ltd.

Feng said that the implementation of this project will further drive the local manufacturing industry and service businesses, as well as inject a strong impetus for the high-quality growth of the regional economy in Southwest China.

Fixed-asset investment in China's railways rose 6.6 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of the year, said China State Railway Group Co Ltd, the nation's rail operator.

In the first quarter, a total of 113.55 billion yuan was invested in the country's railways, said the group, adding that the growth of the investment was comparatively high in recent years.