On August 12, after nearly 30 hours of continuous effort, as the last batch of concrete was slowly poured into the formwork, the **main pier tower base of the Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Railway Bridge on the Nantong-Suzhou-Jiaxing-Ningbo Railway, constructed by China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group, was successfully completed, marking that the bridge construction has officially entered the main tower construction stage.

The Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Railway Bridge is a controlling project of the Nantong-Suzhou-Jiaxing-Ningbo High-Speed Railway. With a total length of 29.2 kilometers, it crosses the sea along its entire route and is arranged as a double-track railway with a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour. It starts from Haiyan, Jiaxing in the north, crosses the Hangzhou Bay waters, and connects to Cixi City, Ningbo in the south.

It features three navigation channel bridges—north, central, and south—as well as approach bridges crossing the embankment, the sea, and the shallow shoal area. It is an ultra-long cross-sea high-speed railway passenger-dedicated bridge integrating long-span multi-span high piers, ultra-low water-blocking ratio, and fully buried pile-cap foundations under complex marine conditions, and is also the world's longest cross-sea railway bridge with the highest construction standards.

The tower base of the No. 8 main tower of the North Navigation Channel Bridge poured this time is also the **first main tower to begin construction on the Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Railway Bridge.

At the same time, on the morning of August 12, the "Red Boat" shield tunneling machine for the Fenhu Tunnel of the Nantong-Suzhou-Jiaxing-Ningbo High-Speed Railway was launched at Fenhu Village, Taozhuang Town, Jiashan County, Jiaxing City.

As the cutterhead of the "Red Boat" shield tunneling machine slowly rotated, this major national equipment integrating technology, environmental protection, and high efficiency began its journey through Fenhu Lake, marking that the construction of the Nantong-Suzhou-Jiaxing-Ningbo High-Speed Railway has entered a new stage.

The cutterhead of the "Red Boat" super-large-diameter slurry balance shield tunneling machine has a diameter of 14.82 meters, equivalent to the height of a five-story building. The machine has a total length of 115 meters and a total weight of approximately 3,986.6 tons.

The Fenhu Tunnel is a controlling project of the Nantong-Suzhou-Jiaxing-Ningbo High-Speed Railway. It is constructed by Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway Passenger Dedicated Line Co., Ltd. and built by China Railway Tunnel Group Co., Ltd. It is located in Jiashan County, Jiaxing City and Wujiang District, Suzhou City, crossing the provincial boundary between Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces. The tunnel has a total length of 3,732 meters, of which 2,228.59 meters are within Zhejiang. The tunnel is designed as a single-tube double-track tunnel with a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour. The maximum water depth of the section passing beneath Fenhu Lake is about 4 meters, and the length of the section passing beneath Fenhu Lake is 1,180 meters.

The Nantong-Suzhou-Jiaxing-Ningbo High-Speed Railway is an important component of the coastal railway passenger transport corridor in the "Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal" main framework of the national high-speed railway network, and is a backbone line of the Yangtze River Delta intercity railway network. The project officially started construction on November 30, 2022. Once completed, it will connect with multiple lines including the already operational Yancheng-Nantong High-Speed Railway, Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Railway, Shanghai-Nanjing Riverside High-Speed Railway, and Ningbo-Taizhou-Wenzhou High-Speed Railway. It will fundamentally eliminate the shortcomings of the north-south vertical supply system of regional intercity transportation and achieve rapid passenger transport between the northern and southern wings of the Yangtze River Delta.