Overview
- The 22.13 km tunnel through the Tianshan range opened to traffic on Dec. 26 as part of Xinjiang’s G0711 Urumqi–Yuli Expressway.
- State reports say the mountain section now takes about 20 minutes and the overall Urumqi–Korla journey drops from roughly seven hours to about three to three and a half hours.
- Officials say the project sets two world records: the longest expressway tunnel and the deepest vertical shaft for a highway tunnel.
- Construction crossed 16 major fault zones and contended with high ground stress, roughly 3,000 m elevation, and temperatures near −42 °C.
- Engineers used a “three tunnels plus four shafts” method with shafts around 700 m deep; the five-year, 324.7 km expressway investment totaled 46.7 billion yuan.