A major use of the bridge will be to transport iron ore from the Kimkan open-pit mine in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast that is owned by IRC Limited, which is partly owned by Petropavlovsk plc. Petropavlovsk plc will participate in financing the bridge's construction. The bridge is expected to transport more than 3 million metric tons of cargo and 1.5 million passengers per year.
History
The bridge was first proposed in 2007 by Valery Solomonovich Gurevich, the vice-chairman of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Gurevich said that the proposal to construct a bridge across the river was first suggested by the Russian side, in view of growing cargo transportation demands. In 2013, the transport ministries of Russia and China signed a general construction agreement. During President Putin's visit to China in May 2014, another agreement about the construction of the bridge was signed by Russian and Chinese officials. In September 2014, Russia and China founded a joint company which will control the process of building the bridge. In November 2014, the localRussian media reported that a significant amount of the construction work had been carried out on the Chinese part of the bridge, but hardly anything had been done on the Russian part. In June 2016, the Russian government selected SK Most Group, a well-connected private Russian company led by Ruslan Baisarov, to work on the project. By July 2016, the Chinese portion of the bridge was finished but work had not started on the much shorter Russian portion. In December 2016, work began on the Russian portion of the bridge. Completion of structural link between the two sides of the bridge was completed in March 2019. Opening to rail traffic has been repeatedly delayed, with the December 2019 estimate being "the end of 2020", and then 3rd quarter of 2021.
Design
The bridge was designed by Russia's Giprostroymost institute, satisfying both Russian and Chinese standards. In 2014, it was reported that the main structure over the Amur River runs north-south and will consist of twenty 110-meter steel through-truss spans. The bridge will have both a standard gauge track and a Russian gauge track. However, the two tracks will be offset by only 800 mm, so that only one track can be used at any given time.
