Beijing's Sanyuan Bridge Recontructed in 36 Hours first time in the World

 

The refurbishment of Beijing's Sanyuan Bridge, or Sanyuanqiao started at 11p.m. on Nov. 13, 2015. The whole reconstruction process completed within 43 hours.

The most challenging part of the overhaul, the replacement of the 1300 tons of new surfacing for the bridge have been transported to the construction site to replace the old surface.

Sanyuan Bridge is a major overpass on the northeastern stretch of the 3rd Ring Road of Beijing. The Airport Expressway, Jingshun Road (China National Highway 101) and the 3rd Ring Road are interlinked by the vital overpass.

New bridge sections are moved slowly into position at Beijing's Sanyuanqiao junction on the 3rd Ring Road on Sunday. Replacement of the decaying bridge took only about 36 hours.

Workers used global positioning systems, lasers and robots to replace old sections with reinforcing an old pivotal cloverleaf junction in a downtown Beijing commercial zone using a new prefabricated steel structure. Traffic flow resumed late on Sunday afternoon.

Replacement of the bridge structure cost 39 million yuan ($6.1 million  dollars), according to Xinhua.

The Sanyuanqiao cloverleaf junction is a major congestion point on a tollway to the airport. It also links two pivotal highways: the Third Ring Road and the highway linking downtown Beijing with the outlying Shunyi District.

Built in 1984, the bridge was in poor shape and needed reinforcement for safety reasons. You can watch this video too here.