en.Wedoany.com Reported - All 17 tunnels of the Lixian-Xianfeng Expressway have been fully completed, with the subgrade works also finished simultaneously. The project is now racing towards the goal of being basically completed by the end of this year and opening to traffic in 2027. The route, spanning 84.5 kilometers with an investment of 19.45 billion yuan, starts in Lichuan City and ends in Xianfeng County, connecting the Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway and the Zhangjiajie-Nanchong Expressway. It serves as a major transportation artery traversing the core area of the Wuling Mountains. Once opened, the travel time from Lichuan to Xianfeng will be reduced from the current 2.5 hours to 1 hour.
The bridge-tunnel ratio of the Lixian-Xianfeng Expressway is as high as 77%. The route passes through deep mountain valleys and highly developed karst areas, with extremely complex geological conditions. The construction area was once dubbed a "civil engineering forbidden zone." The most challenging tunnel on the entire line, the Loumen Tunnel, cuts through a giant karst cave that spans both the left and right tubes. A single "hall" inside this cave is equivalent in area to a standard football field, accompanied by 113 bead-like smaller caves. During construction, there were extremely high risks of mud gushing and water inrush. Gan Xuejun, Executive Director of Hubei Communications Investment Group's Exi Construction Company, stated that the project team relied on precise detection methods such as geological radar and advanced horizontal drilling. For different types of karst caves, they employed techniques including backfilling with concrete, installing spanning slabs, and grouting reinforcement, and also built a drainage tunnel over 300 meters long, ultimately ensuring the tunnel safely passed through the karst cave area.
Above ground, the form traveler construction of the Dahe Grand Bridge posed another challenge. Located in Shanshuyuan Village, Gaoleshan Town, Xianfeng County, this bridge is the tallest continuous rigid-frame bridge under construction in Hubei Province, and is now racing towards full closure in August. Shen Zhipeng, Head of the Project Engineering Department, explained that because the bridge is adjacent to the Tangya Scenic Area, construction access roads could not be built, making the transport of 30,000 cubic meters of concrete required for the main pier pouring a major challenge. The construction team innovatively adopted a high-drop deceleration chute, similar to laying a 70-meter-long "slide," allowing concrete to be transported through pipes to the bottom of the canyon, where it was remixed and then pumped to the pouring point.
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