At 10:18 on December 29, as the drill bit of the rotary drilling rig slowly broke ground, the first pile foundation of the Oujiang River Highway-Railway Bridge of the Wenzhou-Fuzhou High-Speed Railway—the world's largest-span four-track railway—was successfully drilled in Beibaixiang Town, Yueqing City. This is also the first pile foundation drilled along the entire Wenzhou-Fuzhou High-Speed Railway line, marking that this key controlling project has officially entered the main structure construction stage.

The Oujiang River Highway-Railway Bridge of the Wenzhou-Fuzhou High-Speed Railway innovatively adopts a "flat-deck bridge" design, with four high-speed rail tracks in the middle of the bridge deck and two-way six-lane highways on both sides. The bridge's main span reaches 700 meters and its width is about 60 meters, ranking among the world's leading structures in scale. The pile foundation drilled this time is located at Pier 43 of the left carriageway of the bridge's north approach, with a pile length of 80 meters and a pile diameter of 1.5 meters, imposing extremely high requirements on construction precision and technical standards.

The project crosses the Longwan Provincial Marine Special Protection Area in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, and the north channel of the Oujiang River must meet the navigation requirements of 35,000-tonne-class seagoing vessels; therefore, the main bridge has a large span and is subject to strict environmental protection and navigation standards. In particular, No. 83 caisson, currently the world's deepest ultra-deep caisson for an onshore railway, presents outstanding technical challenges. In addition to enhancing typhoon resistance through structural design, the southern section of the project must also coordinate the relationship between ecological protection and construction, and protect resources along the route such as the Longwan District Shupaisha Provincial Important Wetland and mangroves.

The project is constructed under the responsibility of the Hangzhou Hub Engineering Construction Command of Shanghai Railway Group, with China Railway 11th Bureau undertaking the construction task. To ensure the smooth drilling of the first pile, the construction team planned ahead and made meticulous arrangements, successively completing various preparatory work including approval of the construction plan and inspection declaration for hole opening, and organizing multi-level technical briefings and operation training, thereby achieving full-process safety and quality control in the construction of the first pile foundation.

The Wenzhou-Fuzhou High-Speed Railway broke ground in Yueqing on September 29. It is an important component of the coastal corridor of the "Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal" high-speed railway network in the National Comprehensive Three-Dimensional Transport Network Plan, and an important section linking the Yangtze River Delta with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The line starts from Yueqing Station (exclusive), runs south through Dongtou District, Longwan District, Ruian City, Pingyang County, Longgang City and Cangnan County before entering Fujian Province, then passes through Fuding, Zherong and Fu'an before being introduced into Ningde Station, and finally reaches Fuzhou South Station along the Hangzhou-Shenzhen Railway corridor, connecting through with the Fuzhou-Xiamen High-Speed Railway. Upon completion, it will enable direct travel from Wenzhou to Fuzhou in about one hour. The project involves approximately 303 kilometers of newly built main line, with a construction period of 5 years, the simultaneous construction of a 33.13-kilometer connecting line to the Hangzhou-Wenzhou High-Speed Railway, and the construction of the Oujiang River Highway-Railway Bridge of the Wenzhou-Fuzhou High-Speed Railway.

Upon completion of the Wenzhou-Fuzhou High-Speed Railway project, it will greatly shorten the spatial and temporal distance between Yueqing and the Pearl River Delta and the major city clusters of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, further enhance the transport hub capacity of Yueqing, and play an important role in building a modern comprehensive transport hub in the northern wing of Wenzhou and integrating into the "521" high-speed rail travel circle.