Beyond the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, Another Mega Cross-Sea Project is Coming

Ask AI · How did the once-eliminated Wangpanshan plan reverse and become a national project?

What is its significance?

Almost 70 kilometers long! A super cross-sea project planned for over a decade—the Shanghai-Zhoushan Cross-Sea Corridor—has once again entered the public eye.

Once completed, it is expected to become the world’s longest cross-sea bridge, about 15 kilometers longer than the current Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.

Recently, the Fourth Session of the 14th National People’s Congress approved the “Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China.” This grand “top-level design” explicitly mentions advancing the “Shanghai-Zhoushan Cross-Sea Corridor” in the “Column 4: Construction of a National Comprehensive Three-Dimensional Transportation Network.”

This means that this “long dragon” crossing Hangzhou Bay has risen from a local blueprint to a national plan, entering a new stage of comprehensive planning and promotion.

The “trumpet-shaped” Hangzhou Bay separates Shanghai from Southeast Zhejiang, with Shanghai and Zhoushan separated by the sea. Currently, there are multiple cross-sea routes, including the long-serving Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Bridge and the under-construction Tong-Su-Jia-Yong Hangzhou Bay Railway Bridge. Further inland, there are also Jia-Shao Bridge and others.

So, why plan another cross-sea route? What is the special significance of building the Shanghai-Zhoushan Cross-Sea Corridor?

01

Why is the “third cross-sea shortcut” absolutely necessary?

Looking at a map, Ningbo and Shanghai face each other across the bay, only about 100 kilometers in a straight line. But today, there is no “no road” situation—yet, there is still no direct connection.

Let’s look at the existing routes.

In May 2008, the Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Bridge was opened, directly connecting Ningbo and Jiaxing, becoming the first land route crossing Hangzhou Bay, ending the history of having to detour through Hangzhou. It was a super engineering feat at the time.

However, even so, the driving distance from Ningbo to Shanghai still involves a big detour—over 200 kilometers and nearly two and a half hours. For those wanting to “leave at will,” this route is still too long.

Another route under construction is the Hangzhou Bay Railway Bridge. As a key control project for the Suzhou-Jiaxing-Ningbo high-speed railway, it is currently the longest high-speed rail cross-sea bridge in the world, impressive and highly anticipated. But its route still goes north from Ningbo through Jiaxing to Suzhou, Nantong, and then into Shanghai.

Both routes—one road, one rail—serve different purposes but fail to solve the same problem: why can’t there be a “direct” route between Shanghai and Ningbo?

Diagram of the Shanghai-Ningbo Cross-Sea Corridor Source: Ningbo Daily

Compared to these, the biggest highlight of the planned Shanghai-Zhoushan Cross-Sea Corridor is—two words: direct.

According to preliminary plans, this combined road and rail super-bridge will be located about 20 to 40 kilometers east of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, along a nearly straight path, cutting through the waves and crossing the bay to directly connect Shanghai and Cixi in Ningbo. Nearly 70 kilometers long, once built, it will surpass all existing cross-sea bridges in China, becoming the longest.

What does “direct” mean?

For Ningbo residents, it means saying goodbye to the “C”-shaped high-speed rail route. Previously, traveling from Ningbo to Shanghai by high-speed train required first going to Hangzhou and then turning northeast—at least an hour and a half. Even with the future Tong-Su-Jia-Yong high-speed railway, reducing travel time to about an hour, the detour via Jiaxing remains.

Looking at the entire Yangtze River Delta, cities like Nanjing, Hangzhou, Hefei, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou already have direct high-speed rail connections to Shanghai. Ningbo, however, still “detours.”

Ningbo Institute of Technology senior engineer Leng Zhaohua explains that currently, Ningbo only has one high-speed rail route to Shanghai, which goes via Hangzhou. From a passenger demand perspective, the Shanghai-Ningbo corridor really needs the new cross-sea route.

Here’s some data: Since the Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Bridge opened, it has carried a total of 266 million vehicles. In 2025, the annual volume is expected to reach 23.1363 million, with an average daily flow close to 63,400 vehicles.

According to feasibility reports from over 20 years ago, the saturation point for the bridge was about 90,000 vehicles per day. Now, that number is approaching.

02

It’s more than just “one less circle”

After the news that the Shanghai-Zhoushan Cross-Sea Corridor was included in the national “14th Five-Year Plan,” discussions erupted—some with anticipation, others with doubts.

“People in Ningbo have waited a long time, but is such a huge investment really worth it?” some netizens questioned. “Will building another high-speed rail just overlap with the under-construction Tong-Su-Jia-Yong? Is it a waste?”

These concerns are not unfounded. A nearly 70-kilometer combined road-rail cross-sea bridge involves investments in the hundreds of billions of yuan (the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, completed in 2018, had a total investment of 126.9 billion yuan). Rational questions about “value” are unavoidable.

In response, Hong Feng, director of the Transportation Planning Department at Ningbo City Planning and Design Institute, said straightforwardly: it shouldn’t be viewed just as a bridge, but with strategic vision.

“Tong-Su-Jia-Yong and the Shanghai-Zhoushan Corridor are not the same thing,” Hong Feng explained. The Tong-Su-Jia-Yong hub on the north bank has relatively low connectivity and limited network access. “It’s like a ‘branch line’—it can reach Shanghai but not the core area. The existing Shanghai-Hangzhou and Beijing-Shanghai corridors are already saturated, with peak times hard to get tickets. Expanding capacity on a large scale is almost impossible.”

In other words, Ningbo doesn’t lack the desire to “use the route,” but the “road” is already congested.

A schematic of the new Nantong-Ningbo railway route Source: Shanghai Railway Bureau

Let’s look at Ningbo’s importance.

With a GDP exceeding 1.8 trillion yuan and a population close to 10 million, Ningbo is a top-tier economic hub among Chinese prefecture-level cities. In the Shanghai metropolitan planning, Ningbo’s role is crucial, especially Cixi, which has been explicitly included in the “commuting circle” of the Shanghai metropolis.

Once the corridor is built, the travel time from Ningbo to Shanghai will be shortened to 40 minutes.

What does this mean? It means you can leave Ningbo in the morning, attend a meeting or have coffee in Shanghai, and be back for lunch—truly “same city” integration.

However, Hong Feng believes the significance of this route goes far beyond “Ningbo-Shanghai integration.”

“From Hangzhou’s perspective, it can relieve pressure on the Hangzhou-Shanghai and Hangzhou-Shaoxing-Ningbo high-speed rail lines, and provide resources to enhance the radiation capacity of Jiaxing and Shaoxing; regionally, it can fill the most lacking link in the Shanghai metropolitan area, helping to build the ‘Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Golden Triangle,’ where the three areas can develop their strengths, strengthen collaboration, and boost competitiveness, creating a world-class bay area.”

For East Zhejiang, northern Fujian, and the entire southeastern coast, this transportation corridor is a golden route to reshape regional advantages and activate development momentum. It enhances the connectivity between the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta city clusters.

From 2022 to 2035, Zhejiang plans to add new expressways Source: “National Highway Network Plan (2022–2035)”

“Building the Shanghai-Zhoushan Cross-Sea Corridor will have significant functional effects on regional economic development,” said He Jianhua, researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, in an interview. Leveraging this corridor, Shanghai and Ningbo can deepen complementary advantages and jointly promote the construction of an international science and technology innovation center.

More importantly, with Shanghai Port and Ningbo-Zhoushan Port as “dual leaders,” coordinated port and shipping layouts can truly forge a world-class port cluster.

This reveals a simple truth: some roads are built for the convenience of a city or region; but this road is built for the future of the entire area.

Perhaps, as some netizens said, this is indeed a “super investment.” But some investments are not about immediate gains—they are about the future landscape. As the saying goes, “Long-term vision is key”—the Shanghai-Zhoushan Cross-Sea Corridor is a crucial move in this grand strategic game.

03

An “eliminated plan” makes a comeback

In fact, the concept of the Shanghai-Zhoushan Cross-Sea Corridor is much older than most realize. Its first appearance was actually before the “14th Five-Year Plan” was drafted.

Back in 2021, Zhejiang proposed a transportation vision for 2021–2035, including investing “five thousand billion yuan” to develop super projects like the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed rail and the Shanghai-Zhoushan corridor, aiming to connect the core areas of the Yangtze River Delta. It was during this period that the name “Shanghai-Zhoushan Corridor” first appeared in planning documents.

Tracing its origins further back, the earliest prototype of the corridor was the Wangpanshan plan, which was ultimately eliminated during the early planning of the Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Bridge.

Image source: Shutterstock_700842751

At the turn of the century, during the planning of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, experts proposed multiple bridge locations. Hangzhou Bay, at the mouth of the Qiantang River, is a famous “big trumpet-shaped” bay. The farther out from the trumpet, the longer the crossing distance and the higher the investment.

The Wangpanshan plan was the longest route among the initial options. Due to limited funds and lack of experience with ultra-long cross-sea bridges, it was quickly eliminated—never even formally discussed in the bridge location selection.

A participating expert at the time commented that the route from the coastal highway was the most direct, with islands along the way that could serve as service areas or pier sites. The Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Bridge was built as a highway bridge, and the cross-sea railway was not yet on the agenda—high-speed rail was still in exploratory stages domestically.

Wangpanshan is an uninhabited island in Hangzhou Bay, off the coast of Pinghu, near Shanghai’s Jinshan District, historically part of the ancient salt-producing county.

Interestingly, this small island is also mentioned in Jin Yong’s famous novel “The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber.” Perhaps because Jin Yong was from Haining, near Hangzhou Bay, he set the opening scene of the novel on Wangpanshan, where the legendary sword is displayed, thus launching the core plot.

If the Hangzhou Bay Bridge had adopted the Wangpanshan plan back then, Zhejiang might have had a “martial arts-themed” service area. This adds an intriguing reason to look forward to the “14th Five-Year Plan” publicized cross-sea bridge.

As for the other plans that lost out in the initial location selection—such as the Xiaoshan route (now the Qianjiang Tunnel) and the Guzu route (now the Jia-Shao Bridge)—they have long been built and operational.

It is reported that after the Shanghai-Zhoushan Corridor was included in the plan, national and local departments will accelerate the preliminary research. Zhejiang’s “14th Five-Year Plan” explicitly aims to start construction of the corridor.

Experts point out that the challenging conditions of Hangzhou Bay—large tidal ranges, strong scouring, rapid currents, thick silt layers, and frequent shallow gas—pose unprecedented technical and safety challenges for constructing a 70-kilometer combined road-rail cross-sea route.

Last year, Zhejiang’s Development and Reform Commission publicly responded that in 2023, Zhejiang formally requested support from the National Development and Reform Commission to include this project in the new “Medium and Long-term Railway Network Plan,” and entrusted China Communications Construction Company to conduct a feasibility study, which was reviewed by experts at the end of 2023.

Currently, Zhejiang is still striving to include the project in the “Medium and Long-term Railway Network Plan” and coordinate with the national railway development plan. They are also working to incorporate the project into the “Shanghai Railway Hub Master Plan.”

Regarding route selection, Zhejiang’s Development and Reform Commission is studying options including new stations at Cixi East and a southern connection to Ningbo West. However, due to strict requirements from the National Development and Reform Commission and China Railway Group on route alignment and technical standards, further detailed research and scientific demonstration are needed.

Source | Yongjinlou

Cover image source: Shutterstock_501742012
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