First Motorway Bridge Between Russia & China Opens, Connecting Blagoveshchensk to Heihe

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (Sputnik) - The first motorway bridge between Russia and China was opened on Friday, linking the cities of Blagoveshchensk and Heihe. A number of senior Chinese and Russian officials took part in the opening ceremony remotely, including the governors of Russia's Amur Region and China's Heilongjiang Province. The ceremony was held with via teleconference from studios in Moscow, Vladivostok, and Beijing, as well as sites in Blagoveshchensk and Heihe. The governor of the Chinese region reportedly started the traffic on the bridge by saying, "Let's go!" in Russian, in an apparent homage to the words of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. Russian deputy prime minister and Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Far East Yury Trutnev said in a speech that "in today's divided world, the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe bridge between Russia and China is of particular importance." According to Trutnev, the bridge is expected to become "another thread that connects the peoples of Russia and China." "The uniqueness of such a bridge is that the project was implemented without budgetary funds. I want to thank everyone who made this bridge possible," he added. In turn, the vice premier of the state council of China said that "the Chinese side is ready to use the opportunity to launch the transition, provide better logistics services. Together, we will turn the bridge into a bridge of friendship and cooperation." The first eight trucks from both countries went across the cross-border bridge between Russia and China. The construction of the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe cross-border bridge across the Amur began in December 2016 in the Blagoveshchensk district of the Amur Region and was carried out simultaneously from both banks. The opening ceremony was initially planned for November 2020, but due to the COVID-19 situation in the area, the launch of the crossing had to be postponed. The length of the bridge alone is 1,080 meters. It is two-lane, with a total carriageway width of 11 meters. The total length of the bridge crossing is about 20 kilometers. This includes six kilometers of road in China and 13 kilometers of access roads in Russia, in which another 278 meters is a bridge over the Kanikurgan channel. Read more: https://sputniknews.com/20220610/first-motorway-bridge-between-russia-and-china-opened-it-connects-blagoveshchensk-heihe-1096172875.html