On August 28, after 21 months of arduous work, the right tube of the Majiajing Extra-Long Tunnel on the Hubei Lixian Expressway, a key transportation artery in the core area of the Wuling Mountains invested in and built by Hubei Communications Investment Group Co., Ltd., was successfully holed through. This is the first extra-long tunnel to be completed on the Lixian Expressway.

The Majiajing Tunnel is a controlling project of the Lixian Expressway. Its entrance portal is located in Qunli Village, Dashaxi Township, Lichuan City, and its exit portal is in Baiguo Village, Xiaocun Township, Xianfeng County. It is a separated tunnel, with a left tube 4,575 meters long and a right tube 4,515 meters long, and a maximum burial depth of about 433 meters. The surrounding rock of the tunnel consists entirely of Grade IV and Grade V rock, of which Grade V rock accounts for 1,634 meters, or 36 percent of the tunnel's total length. The surrounding rock is fractured, posing high construction safety risks.

Both the entrance and exit of the Majiajing Tunnel are located on cliffs, leaving no working face for tunnel excavation. To ensure smooth construction, the project department, together with the owner and the design unit, conducted multiple site surveys and reasonably optimized the construction plan, creating construction conditions for tunnel excavation by diverting river channels and filling river valleys. Because the Enshi area is rainy year-round and prone to road collapse and landslides that affect road transport, the project department built a 20-kilometer-long construction access road to ensure unimpeded material supply. Water resources are scarce in the construction area, and agricultural voltage cannot meet the on-site power demand for construction. The project department carefully organized and rationally laid out the work, excavating water storage ponds on the right side of the tunnel to store water and laying dedicated power grids to supply electricity for tunnel construction, thereby ensuring smooth tunnel construction.

The Lixian Expressway project is the largest mountain expressway project under construction in Hubei and a key transportation artery linking the core area of the Wuling Mountains across Hubei, Hunan, Chongqing and Guizhou. Once completed, the travel distance between Lichuan and Xianfeng will be shortened from 2.5 hours to 1 hour.