(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-03 14:50

　　
　　Waibaidu Bridge is just like a symbol, a mark, or a unique name card for this beautiful city. [Shanghai Daily]

Work starts at Thursday midnight to dismantle the century-old Waibaidu Bridge to enable the construction of a gigantic vehicle tunnel, project officials said.

The historic iron bridge, the first of its kind in China, will undergo piece-by-piece maintenance or reconstruction before being restored to its original site by March next year.

Qin Kangde, a publicity official of Shanghai Chengtou which is managing the project, said yesterday the project would be in three parts.

First, the steel truss and girders of the bridge will be dismantled into dozens of pieces and transported to a local shipyard for intensive maintenance piece by piece.

Then the bridge piers will be reconstructed and, finally, the renovated structure will be put back in its original place and the road surface repaved.

Zheng Bin, a project manager, said maintenance workers would be meticulous in their work.

"We will test the quality of each metal bar of the entire truss," he said. Any worn pieces will be replaced with new ones.

Workers would also be checking the quality of each rivet. All the new bridge parts will have to be consistent with the original ones in terms of look, color and texture, Zheng said.

To make the bridge strong enough for more vehicles, the wooden piers will be replaced by concrete piers while the concrete bridge girders will be replaced by steel girders.

Despite all those renovation works, the look of the bridge will not be affected after the road surface is paved with asphalt in the original color, he said.

According to the officials of the Shanghai Commission of Cultural Relics Management, the project has been endorsed by the country's Cultural Relics Management Bureau. When the bridge is restored, it can be used for another 50 years at least.

One of the best-preserved pieces of architecture in the city, the bridge has been a major thoroughfare for pedestrians and vehicles with about 27,000 vehicles using it daily.

A 3.3-kilometer, two-level vehicle tunnel, called "Bund Passage," is to be built beneath the bridge and the Suzhou Creek to help ease traffic problems at ground level.