Crossing the Northern and Southern Tianshan Mountains in 20 Minutes: World’s Longest Highway Tunnel Opens to Traffic
On the morning of December 26, the Tianshan Victory Tunnel—the world’s longest highway tunnel—was opened to traffic, marking the full operational completion of the G0711 Urumqi–Yuli Expressway. China has once again set a new global record in tunnel construction.
The vision of “enjoying the snow in northern Xinjiang in the morning and the sand in southern Xinjiang at noon” by car has now become a reality. Passenger driver Han Jun said: “In the past, a round trip to Urumqi would take at least two days; now, day trips between northern and southern Xinjiang will become the norm, and the number of passengers will continue to grow.”
As the fastest highway link between Urumqi and southern Xinjiang, the Urumqi–Yuli Expressway spans 324.7 kilometers, with a total investment of RMB 46.7 billion, and was completed after more than five years of intensive construction and overcoming numerous challenges.
“The terrain and landforms along the Urumqi–Yili Expressway are extremely complex: a single 11-kilometer stretch features 14 bridges and 5 tunnels, with bridges and tunnels accounting for more than 90% of the total route length—this is truly ‘building roads on the road,’” said Zhou Zheng, General Manager of the Project Management Office for the Urumqi–Yili Highway Package under China Communications Construction Company in Xinjiang.
The Tianshan Victory Tunnel, located in the middle section of the line, is the most challenging project and is regarded as a global engineering conundrum.
This tunnel has a total length of 22.13 kilometers, equivalent to the combined length of five Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge highway bridges. The maximum in-situ stress within the tunnel approaches 22 megapascals—meaning that a rock sample no larger than a fingernail would have to withstand a load of more than 200 kilograms. Moreover, surface construction must contend with a high-altitude, frigid environment at elevations exceeding 3,000 meters, where the annual average temperature is −5.4°C and the lowest temperatures can plunge as low as −41.5°C.
In the face of these challenges, the project team deployed China’s first domestically developed, globally pioneering press-in tunneling machine for hard-rock excavation and innovatively adopted a “three tunnels plus four vertical shafts” construction scheme. This approach segmented the entire tunnel into sections for phased construction, thereby reducing the difficulty of excavating each individual tunnel and shortening the overall construction schedule by more than one-quarter.
Near the tunnel lies Tianshan No. 1 Glacier, a vital habitat for snow leopards, where ecological conservation standards are exceptionally stringent. By precisely controlling the construction footprint, optimizing blasting plans, and establishing ecological monitoring stations, the project team has made every effort to protect the surrounding environment, ensuring that construction and ecological preservation coexist in harmony.
Stretching more than 2,500 kilometers from east to west, the Tianshan Mountains span central Xinjiang, with numerous snow-capped peaks and icy summits. Poor road conditions and long distances have long constrained development in the region. However, with the opening of the East Tianshan Tunnel in 2021 and the full completion of the Urumqi–Yili Expressway this year, the era of “difficulty in crossing the Tianshan Mountains” in central and eastern Xinjiang has finally come to an end.
According to reports, construction is currently accelerating on the highway that traverses the Western Tianshan Mountains between Zhaosu and Wensu, while work has also begun on the “internet-famous” Duku Highway.
“At present, the total length of expressways open to traffic in Xinjiang has exceeded 8,000 kilometers, and the total length of first-class highways has surpassed 13,000 kilometers,” said Guo Sheng, Party Secretary and Deputy Director of the Transportation Department of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. He added that with an increasing number of highways traversing the Tianshan Mountains now in operation, travel between northern and southern Xinjiang will become even more convenient, thereby accelerating and enhancing the region’s development.
“The Urumqi–Yili Expressway is another major landmark highway project completed during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, following the Shenzhen–Zhongshan Passage,” said Zhou Rongfeng, Director of the Highway Bureau of the Ministry of Transport. “During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, highway development will be centered on accelerating the overarching goal of building a strong transportation nation, steadfastly supporting and underpinning major national strategies, and further enhancing the modernized transportation infrastructure system.”
