China opens world’s longest road tunnel in Xinjiang

In China, in the Xinjiang province, the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel has been opened to traffic.
At 22.13 kilometers long, it has been described as “the longest road tunnel in the world.”

This was reported by the state news agency Xinhua on its website, CE Report quotes ANSA.

The Tianshan Shengli Tunnel crosses the central Tianshan Mountains in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and has reduced a dangerous mountain journey that used to take several hours to about 20 minutes.

The tunnel is a key part of the G0711 Urumqi–Yuli Expressway, which also opened on Friday, according to Xinhua. The highway connects urban centers in northern and southern Xinjiang.

Stretching for 2,500 kilometers, the Tianshan Mountains run across central Xinjiang, separating the provincial capital Urumqi, the largest city in the north, from Korla, the largest city in the south.

With the opening of the expressway, travel time between Urumqi and Korla has been reduced from about seven hours to around three hours, the report said.

The expressway, built over five years, is 324.7 kilometers long and required a total investment of 46.7 billion yuan (approximately 6.63 billion US dollars).

As reported by CE Report, the construction of the tunnel faced extreme challenges: in addition to its 22.13-kilometer length, it reaches a maximum burial depth of 1,112.2 meters, crosses 16 geological fault zones, and confronts five major difficulties — high ground stress, high seismic intensity, strict environmental requirements, extreme cold, and high altitude.

To overcome these challenges, Chinese builders implemented innovative solutions, including the construction of eco-friendly access roads to minimize environmental impact and improve material transport efficiency; the adoption of a construction method that reduced the main tunnel’s construction time by more than a quarter; and the use of China’s first domestically developed pressurized hard-rock tunnel boring machine.