Opening ceremony scene

On the morning of June 28, the Phase I project of Hangzhou Metro Line 8, a key supporting project for the 2022 Asian Games constructed under the general contracting of China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), was completed and opened to traffic. Hangzhou's youngest administrative district, Qiantang District, has officially integrated into the main urban area's "30-minute convenient living circle."

Zhou Jiangyong, Standing Committee Member of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and Secretary of the Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee, announced the official opening of the Hangzhou metropolitan area rail transit "interconnectivity" projects, including Hangzhou Metro Line 8. Gao Xingfu, Vice Governor of Zhejiang Province, attended the opening ceremony and delivered a speech.

Hangzhou Metro Line 8, with a total length of 17.1 kilometers, connects Xiasha, Hezhuang, Yipeng, Xinwan and other areas from west to east. The line has 9 stations in total, with transfers to Line 1 and Line 7 at Wenhai South Road Station and Qingliu Middle Road Station respectively. The total investment is 13.526 billion yuan.

The project was designed under the overall general contracting of China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group, constructed under the general contracting of CRCC, and undertaken by units including China Railway 11th Bureau Group, China Railway 16th Bureau Group, China Railway 19th Bureau Group, China Railway Construction Bridge Engineering Bureau Group and China Railway Construction Electrification Bureau Group for all system engineering works such as civil engineering, track, decoration and finishing, mechanical and electrical installation, and communication and signaling.

Since construction began in August 2018, CRCC builders have gone through 2 years and 10 months of arduous construction, overcoming difficulties such as a tight schedule, heavy tasks, large management spans, numerous disciplines involved and high safety risks. By comprehensively promoting and applying the BIM system, they tackled technical, quality and management challenges of cross-construction among multiple disciplines and multiple work faces, achieving one-time completion and opening of the entire line and setting a new record in Hangzhou metro construction. During the trial operation review, experts unanimously agreed that the Phase I project of Line 8 is the line with the shortest construction time and the best degree of completion among the lines opened in Hangzhou.

During the construction of Line 8, CRCC adopted a large single-tube double-track shield to successfully cross the more than 2,800-meter-wide Qiantang River, with a maximum water pressure of 0.451 MPa, complex geological conditions and a maximum tidal range of about 9 meters during the flood season. This set the record for the longest river crossing in Hangzhou metro history and also created a domestic record of a shield machine crossing 3,466 meters in one go without opening the chamber or changing the cutterhead.

The signaling system of Line 8 adopts a safe and reliable CBTC system based on LTE communication technology, which can realize functions such as fault schematic playback, fault summary and station history retrieval, enabling efficient fault handling. The integrated supervisory control system enables information interconnection with transfer lines at transfer stations, realizing information sharing and disaster prevention linkage between different lines at transfer stations.

The completion and opening of Hangzhou Metro Line 8 will effectively improve the comprehensive transportation network of Qiantang District, boost rapid regional development, realize transfers with the existing Hangzhou metro network, optimize urban spatial layout, and further open up communication channels for the development of the eastern and western wings of Hangzhou. During the 2022 Asian Games, Hangzhou Metro Line 8 will serve as a major transportation channel, facilitating spectators' rapid access to and from event venues.