Yangshan Island Deep-Water Port Project, Shanghai, China

Abstract

Shanghai was designed as the center of marine shipping in China. Shanghai is located at east of China and on the verge of the East China Sea. In addition, The Yangzi River and Qiantang River are surrounding the city and access to the sea here. The Huangpu River crosses the city center and has been called the mother river of Shanghai. Lots of ports and terminals were operating on the river. After near 30 years fast development, Shanghai has become largest port in China. Since 2000, the major ports and terminals on Huangpu River had been required to move to farther places because of the development and the increased value of the land in the city center. The governments of China and Shanghai tried to build the largest shipping center in shanghai. In 2005, the capability of the cargo traffic stagnated. The demand of more ports and terminals were showed. Unfortunately, due to the limitation of the geometry of the city and surround area, it was not possible to build the ports to fit the requirements of the large containers vessels and tanker vessels. In 2002, a new port project, Yangshan island Deep Water port were launched. Actually, Yangshan Island is not geographically located in Shanghai. The island is around 30 km from the closest spot of Shanghai. Obviously, the transportation from the island and Shanghai was one of the major problems. In addition, in order to increase the capability of the marine shipping traffic, the port was design to host the huge shipping, i.e. 200,000 tones tankers and 10,000 TEU container ships. Currently, the initial three phase construction project has been completed. In 2008, Shanghai successfully became the largest marine shipping center of the world. A 32.5 km bridge was built on the sea to connect Shanghai and Yangshan Island.