The second link between Yantian District and urban Shenzhen opens Friday. Gan Yuefei
Han Ximin
GRANDMA Li Demei, a retired worker who lives with her son at Meilinyichun housing estate in Futian District, was excited Thursday when she had the chance to ride the new Liantang-Yantian freeway, the second link between eastern Yantian District and downtown Shenzhen which opens Friday.
Li often spends her retirement visiting different parts of Shenzhen, especially the beaches in Yantian District at weekends and holidays with her family.
But quite often her enthusium was dampened with heavy traffic at the Wutongshan Tunnel and Shenyan Road leading to the eastern beaches.
“The opening of the freeway will make the trip from downtown Shenzhen to the eastern coastal areas much easier,” said Li, who traveled on the new road along with other about 100 residents arranged by the local transport bureau.
The 11.38-kilometer freeway links Luosha Road, Liantang and Yanba Expressway to the east.
The two-way, six-lane road, with a designed speed of 80 kilometers per hour, is expected to shorten the travel time from Luohu District to the beaches in Yantian from 90 minutes to 20 minutes.
Costing 2.764 billion yuan, the road has two flyovers, seven tunnels and three bridges. The longest tunnel is Linchang Tunnel which extends 2.42 kilometers. It is also the longest road tunnel in Shenzhen. The length of bridges and tunnels and overpasses accounted for 91 percent of the total length.
“The freeway will greatly promote tourism and port businesses in Yantian, which had long been bottlenecked by traffic jams,” Huang Min, chief of the Shenzhen Municipal Transport Bureau, said Thursday.
It will also divert around 65 percent of the vehicles that had to go through the Wutongshan Tunnel, which opened 19 years ago and has a 10-yuan (US$1.4) toll.
After the opening of the freeway, trucks and long vehicles on Shenyan Road will be diverted to Yanba Expressway, greatly improving traffic flows on Shenyan Road and Luosha Road, which opened in 1993, Huang said.
“The freeway will bring more visitors to Dameisha and other tourist attractions. Yantian is planning to expand its coastal tourism resources by building more facilities including hotels and a convention center in the Dameisha area,” Jiang Tao, tourism chief of Yantian District, said Thursday.
The construction of the freeway was started in February 2005 after seven rounds of negotiations involving the management of Wutongshan Tunnel, Shenzhen Yantian Port Group and a Hong Kong company, failed. Deputies to the local people’s congress had been calling on the the government to dismantle the tollgates at the tunnel since 1996 because it had hampered Yantian’s growth.
Huang was involved in the Shenzhen negotiations with the Hong Kong company. ”The company demanded a large sum of money in one lump that was unacceptable to Shenzhen,” said Huang.