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Tsing Ma Bridge main cables to be completed next month

Aerial spinning of the two main cables of the Tsing Ma Bridge is moving ahead rapidly with over 97 per cent of the work completed.

The Project Director of the Lantau Fixed Crossing Project Management Office of the Highways Department, Mr C K Lau, said today (Sunday): "It is a significant milestone that the 2.2 kilometres long main cables will be completed on target next month.

"This will then be followed by the lifting and placement of the bridge's main deck units, which is scheduled to commence in July," he said.

Mr Lau said the two main cables would be among the largest anywhere in the world with a diameter of 1.1 metres, and will be made up of 28,000 tonnes of wires.

"From July last year, immediately after the successful building of two catwalks spanning the Ma Wan Channel, workers started to build up the two cables wire by wire by a spinning process. Now just nine months later, the work is close to completion," Mr Lau said.

Each main cable consists of 33,400 individual wires, each measuring 5.38 millimetres in diameter and with a total length of 160,000 kilometres, enough to circle the earth about four times.

With a central span of 1,377 metres, the Tsing Ma Bridge will be one of the longest suspension bridges in the world, and will be the longest carrying both road and rail traffic.

The Tsing Ma Bridge forms part of the Lantau Fixed Crossing, which is an essential element of the highway network of the Airport Core Programme linking the new airport at Chek Lap Kok and Tung Chung new town to the urban areas of Kowloon and Central Hong Kong.

It is being constructed by the Anglo Japanese Construction Joint Venture, under a $7.14 billion contract awarded by the Highways Department in May 1992.

"The Tsing Ma Bridge remains on schedule for completion by mid 1997," Mr Lau said.

End/Sunday, March 12, 1995

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