The Pingtan Haixia Rail-road Bridge, China's first cross-sea rail-road bridge, is expected to partly open to traffic in May. [Photo by Yang Chao/For China Daily]

The Pingtan Haixia Rail-road Bridge, China's first cross-sea rail-road bridge, is expected to partly open to traffic in May. 

The bridge will be the longest of its kind in the world, tripling the length of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, another bridge accommodating both car and train traffic. 

Li Bingfeng, a chief engineer responsible for the bridge's construction, said the new bridge is made of about 300,000 tons of steel and 2.7 million tons of cement, an amount equal to eight Burj Khalifa Towers.

The bridge cost an estimated 10.9 billion yuan ($1.78 billion) and will be a 16.3-km connection between Fuzhou, capital of East China's Fujian province, and the island city of Pingtan off the coast of the Taiwan Strait.

The new bridge will cut travel time between the two areas from two hours to just 30 minutes.

The bridge has two layers, with the upper level being a six-lane highway and the lower level bearing a double-track railway. 

The cross-sea rail link is part of the 88-km Fuzhou-Pingtan railway. It will start from Songxia Port in neighboring Changle county and end in Su'ao town on Pingtan Island.

Strong winds make it difficult to build a bridge over the water in the region, which is known as one of the world's three most perilous seas along with Bermuda and the Cape of Good Hope, according to Li.

Strong windstorms occur in the region an average of 300 days per year, so construction can be carried out on less than 100 days per year, he said.

To deal with the strong winds, the bridge has been equipped with numerous wind barriers, which have helped reduce the wind force by 30-40 percent, Li said.

He also revealed that the bridge's highway is expected to open between late April and early May, while the railway layer will open at the end of November.