At 9:30 on January 13, 2021, the first platform steel pipe piles of the No. 4 pier of the main bridge of the Ma'anshan Yangtze River Highway Bridge on the Chao-Ma Intercity Railway were inserted. This marks the design of China Railway Bridge Institute and the construction of China Railway Bridge Bureau. Construction of Chaoma Intercity Railway officially started.

According to reports, the Maanshan Yangtze River Highway Bridge has a single span of 1,120 meters and a double-span continuous span of 2,240 meters. It is currently the world's largest span three-tower cable-stayed bridge. The middle tower is 345 meters high, equivalent to 115 stories high, and is currently the world's tallest bridge tower; the middle tower base uses 60 4 meters in diameter bored piles, which is currently the world's most inland river and largest diameter bored piles. The pile cap is 89.2 meters long and 54.7 meters wide. Its plane area is nearly 5000 square meters, which is equivalent to 8 standard basketball courts. It is currently the largest bridge pile foundation in the world. This is a combination of super large double main span, super high tower, super large diameter bored pile, etc.

According to Yang Canwen, the person in charge of the Maanshan Highway Bridge of China Railway Bridge Institute, the bridge adopts a three-tower two-main span design, with two main spans exceeding one thousand meters, crossing the Niutun River beach and main channel respectively. The upper road of the bridge is a two-way six-lane urban expressway with a speed of 80 kilometers per hour; the lower layer is a two-line Chaoma intercity railway with a design speed of 250 kilometers per hour, and a two-line intercity railway standard reserved railway with a design speed of 200 kilometers per hour. This will reduce the impact of bridge construction on flood control, the ecological environment and the Yangtze River channel.

Liu Ailin, chief engineer of the China Railway Bridge Bureau, pointed out that the Maanshan Yangtze River Highway Bridge has a large scale, high technology content, complex construction environment, and difficult construction. It will use 2,100 MPa high-strength steel wire, which is currently the world's highest-strength steel wire. For the first time, a series of new materials, new equipment, new techniques and new technologies, such as 10,000-ton-meter-class steel tower cranes, were applied to overcome construction problems.

Chaoma Intercity Railway is the first intercity railway project jointly built by the provinces and cities in Anhui Province. It is connected to the Shanghe-Hangzhou high-speed railway in the north and the Intercity along the Yangtze River in the south of Jiangsu Province in the east. It is not only a direct link between Ma'anshan City and the provincial capital Hefei, but also an Anhui link. A new high-speed rail channel to Shanghai and other cities in the Yangtze River Delta. The Ma'anshan Yangtze River Highway and Railway Bridge is a controlling project of the Chaoma Intercity Railway. After its completion, it will further improve the layout of the regional high-speed railway network and greatly enhance the channel transportation capacity. Editor/He Yuting