By Haifa Chairunisa
The Tianshan Shengli Toll Road Tunnel, stretching 22.13 kilometers and billed as the world’s longest toll road tunnel, officially opened to traffic on Friday (26/12/2025) local time. The tunnel cuts through the central Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northwest China, slashing travel time across the range from several hours to just 20 minutes.
The tunnel is part of the G0711 Urumqi–Yuli Expressway, a key route linking city clusters in northern and southern Xinjiang, which also began full operations on the same day. Integrated into China’s broader expressway network, the route connects major economic hubs including the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, and the Chengdu–Chongqing region, strengthening links between eastern China and Eurasian countries.
“This is an all-weather, high-capacity transport corridor that will significantly enhance the resilience and security of national energy and agricultural supply chains,” said Huang Tao, Deputy Head of the Transportation Bureau of Bayingolin Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture, as quoted by chinadaily.com.
The Tianshan mountain range spans about 2,500 kilometers across Xinjiang, historically separating Urumqi in the north from Korla in the south. With the new toll road in operation, travel time between the two major cities has been reduced from around seven hours to approximately three hours, supporting economic integration between northern and southern Xinjiang.
Businesses are already seeing benefits. Tao Feng, Manager of Yuli Lihua Textile Co., Ltd., said transporting raw materials from northern Xinjiang to Yuli previously took three to four days but can now be completed in one to two days, significantly cutting costs and delivery time.
The expressway project took five years to complete, spans 324.7 kilometers, and required an investment of 46.7 billion yuan (about US$6.63 billion). According to Zhou Zheng, General Manager of the project from China Communications Construction Company, construction in the Tianshan Mountains posed extreme challenges, with complex terrain forcing a bridge-to-tunnel ratio of more than 90 percent along certain sections.
The tunnel itself reaches a maximum depth of 1,112.2 meters and crosses 16 geological fault zones, presenting challenges such as high ground pressure, strong seismic activity, harsh environmental standards, extreme cold, and high-altitude conditions. To overcome these obstacles, engineers adopted innovative construction techniques, including environmentally friendly access roads, time-saving tunnel-building methods, and the use of China’s first domestically developed high-pressure hard rock tunnel boring machine.
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