The Infrastructure Development Office (GDI) has announced that the contractors of the fourth Macau-Taipa bridge project held a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday.
The bridge, which will be built east of Friendship Bridge, will connect the land reclamation area known as Zone A and the Zone E1 reclamation area.
The office told the Chinese-language radio channel of public broadcaster TDM on Wednesday that the contractors completed the project’s preparatory work after the government granted them the project in March this year so that they were able to get the project off the ground on Wednesday.
Following a public tender in which seven consortia submitted their bids, the government granted a joint venture consisting of three construction companies a 5.27-billion-pataca contract late last year for the design and construction of the fourth Macau-Taipa bridge.
The consortium consists of two state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and a local construction company – China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), China Railway Construction Bridge Engineering Bureau Group Co. Ltd. and Omas Construction and Engineering Company Limited.
The government signed the contract with the winning consortium in December last year. However, one of the other six rival bidders appealed the outcome of the tender. After the Court of Second Instance (TSI) rejected the appeal in March this year, the government finally commissioned the winner to carry out the fourth Macau-Taipa bridge project. The consortium is required to complete the project in January 2024.
The 3,100-metre-long bridge will have eight vehicular lanes – four in each direction, with a speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour. One lane in each direction will be for motorcycles only.
The government has said that wind protection barriers will be installed to reduce the wind speed on the bridge, in which case it will be feasible for the bridge to remain open to traffic during typhoon signal No. 8.
