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Home >> Shanghai >> Article
Main road to become expressway in Pudong
From:Shanghai Daily  |  2017-09-15 09:52

A main road in Pudong will become an expressway by the end of this year to make it faster to drive to financial and cultural landmarks of the city.

The 1.98-kilometer-long section of Yanggao Road S. between the Century Avenue and Pujian Road is being renovated into an expressway in a bid to relieve congestion, the Pudong government said.

The section is among the busiest highways in the Pudong New Area because of a batch of cultural and business sites that lie alongside. They include Shanghai Oriental Art Center, Century Square, a Hilton hotel, as well as Lujiazui Software Garden and Century Financial Plaza.

Furthermore, the Pudong branch of Shanghai Museum and the twin towers of the Shanghai International Financial Center will also be built on both sides of Yanggao Road.

The museum's eastern branch, which is expected to open in 2020, will work in concert with the main  Shanghai Museum in downtown to display China’s ancient cultures. The Pudong branch will set up an open workshop for the first time where visitors can watch how cultural relics are restored.

The new financial center will have two towers, one 250 meters tall, the other 260, along with a 85-meter-tall building. Three major financial institutes — Shanghai Stock Exchange, China Financial Futures Exchange and China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation — will move into the center, according to the Pudong government. The center will also incorporate office buildings, a hotel, apartments and shopping malls.

“The road will become a major 'business and commerce passage’ in future to connect these landmarks,” said an official with the district government. The expressway  project is expected to significantly improve the traffic for the area, he added.

Upon completion, the expressway will have a total of six  lanes with a designed driving speed of 60 kilometers per hour, plus four auxiliary roads — two on either side of the expressway — with a designed driving speed of 50kph, according to the government.

A tunnel beneath the road is being extended, while  skywalks will be built to enable pedestrians to cross the expressway.

A landmark roundabout on the Yanggao Road S. and Century Avenue will be renovated into an intersection to improve the efficiency of vehicles. The iconic ancient sundial sculpture on the roundabout, won't be moved, the district government said.

Designed by French architect Jean-Marie Charpentier, the 20-meter-tall steel sculpture was erected in 2000 to celebrate the forthcoming new century.

Traffic jams can be expected on the road section while the expressway is built due to a large number of vehicles especially during rush hours, said Guo Hengming, a traffic police officer taking charge of the area. There are many office workers working in the office buildings by the road, he added.

“There are about 3,500 vehicles on average passing the road section per hour during the morning rush and even more, about 3,750 vehicles for the evening rush hours,” Guo said.

That situation is expected to be largely improved after the completion of the renovation, but before that, drivers will have severe congestion because part of the road will be closed to allow work to go ahead, Guo said.

The city’s traffic authority has adjusted the traffic lights to help to relieve the jams, but the effort may lead to more congestion on nearby Century Avenue as well as Pudian, Weifang, Dingxiang and Minsheng roads, he added.


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