Shanghai-Suzhou-Nantong Yangtze River Bridge. [Photo/Nantong Daily]

The Shanghai-Suzhou-Nantong Yangtze River Bridge has been selected as a winner of the China Civil Engineering Zhan Tianyou Award, the highest honor for technological innovation in China's civil engineering sector.

Located along the Yangtze River in East China's Jiangsu province, the bridge was opened to traffic on July 1, 2020. Stretching 11.07 kilometers, it links Zhangjiagang in Suzhou with Tongzhou district in Nantong, serving as an important road-and-rail crossing along the Yangtze River.

The bridge features a dual-carriageway, six-lane expressway on its upper deck, with a designed speed of 100 kilometers per hour. Its lower deck carries four railway tracks, accommodating both the Shanghai-Suzhou-Nantong Railway, with a designed speed of 200 km/h, and the planned Nantong-Suzhou-Jiaxing-Ningbo high-speed railway, designed for 250 km/h.

The bridge is the world's first road-and-rail cable-stayed bridge with a main span exceeding 1,000 meters, marking a major breakthrough in the construction of large-scale bridges and demonstrating China's advances in civil engineering technology.