After long delays, Pudong Avenue is finally open to vehicular traffic
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Pudong Avenue is finally open to traffic.
The on-again, off-again construction of the 8-kilometer stretch of road in Shanghai has been going on for decades.
The section between Pudong Road S. in the west and Tao’an Road in the east is now open to two-way traffic as a six-to-eight-lane carriageway.
People can drive from the Lujiazui financial hub to the Waigaoqiao free trade zone, the local construction and transportation commission said yesterday.
The area has been witness to the development of the Pudong New Area over 31 years, with the Pudong development office set up at 141 Pudong Avenue.
Due to urban construction, it has been renovated several times over many years.
The latest round of construction, however, left it in dire straits, drawing a number of complaints about the slow pace of work. However, there was a reason for all the delays.
Pudong Avenue was the city’s largest and most challenging and comprehensive traffic project that involved the construction of tunnels, Metro lines, and underground passageways, with the deepest section dug up to 35.4 meters underground, nearly the height of a 12-story building.
The construction initially began near the end of 2007. But thereafter, from time to time, the project was paused to make room for massive underground work.
The work included a rapid transit system formed by the Yan’an Elevated Road and passageways underneath the avenue. It also involved working on Metro lines 14, 18 and 19, as well as the Jiangpu Road Tunnel.
Construction of carriageways above the site itself took up nearly four years, according to the commission.
Veteran photographer Yao Jianliang grew up along the avenue. He never stopped focusing his lens on the area.
“It has been broadened and repaired several times since 1993, and in 2007 the most complicated round of renovations began. I started recording moments and milestones since preparations began in 2005,” he told Shanghai Daily.
“Over the past 16 years, I’ve been to the area on foot or by bike. It’s a tough journey. Every time I had to travel nearly 16 kilometers to get there. So I really understood why people complained of humming bulldozers and bumpy roads. But I also found that it was really a difficult construction project,” Yao said.
A 60-year-old man surnamed Xin, who lives in a residential complex near the intersection of Pudong Avenue and Yuanshen Road, is also excited about the opening of the busy street near his building, but in the first few years of the construction on the street, he was not supportive.
“I had a shop on the street, and since the traffic was entirely blocked, I kept losing customers because there was no more parking space for them. I had to close my business,” he told Shanghai Daily. “My neighbors and I had filed several complaints to the government about the project.”
Later, Xin and other residents were approached by the company that was in charge of the project, and briefed of its progress and significance. That was when they started to be more understanding about it.
“My personal interest might be sacrificed for a period of time, but I came to understand that the project will benefit more people in the long run, including my family,” he said.
Xin said a lot of detours had been cut off and the travel time back home was greatly reduced. The Yuanshen Road Station of Metro Line 14 was expected to open soon.
The reopened Pudong Avenue is expected to ease the traffic pressure on nearby thoroughfares such as Century Avenue, Zhangyang Road and Yanggao Road M.
Incidentally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in a tweet yesterday, described China as an “infrastructure maniac.” “China’s progress in advanced infrastructure is more than 100 times faster than the US,” Musk commented after reading a report on how Chinese workers managed to upgrade a railway station within nine hours.
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