China's longest under-lake tunnel opens

Taihu Tunnel, built under the Taihu Lake in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province, opened to traffic in the afternoon of Dec 30.

Known as the longest passageway under a lake ever built in China, the 10.79-kilometer tunnel is a two-way, six-lane highway with a designed speed for motor vehicles of up to 100 km per hour. The mega road infrastructure project cost around 5 billion yuan ($784.72 million) and took four years to build.

The tunnel will cut travel time between Mashan and Nanquan — lakeside subdistricts of the city of Wuxi in southern Jiangsu province — by half compared with the current commute, and make it more convenient to travel from the urban area of Wuxi to Yixing, a county-level city administered by Wuxi.