In the early hours of August 31, after continuous intensive construction, the main bridge of the Guanfan Expressway spanning the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Railway successfully completed its rotation after turning 81.1° counterclockwise. The single rotation of the approximately 29,000-ton double-deck bridge is the first of its kind in China, marking another solid step toward the goal of completing and opening the third phase of the Guanfan Expressway by the end of the year.

The Guanfan Expressway connects to the completed Nansha Bridge in the west and the Hehuiguan Expressway in the east, and is an important component of the Guangdong-Longnan Expressway, a major corridor out of the province. The main bridge of the Guanfan Expressway spanning the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Railway is a double-deck highway bridge: the upper deck carries the 2.4-kilometer Guanfan Expressway, and the lower deck carries the 1.37-kilometer Huanguan Expressway, built to the standards of a dual-direction 8-lane expressway and a dual-direction 6-lane urban expressway respectively. Dongguan Communications Investment Group's subsidiary Dongguan Road and Bridge Company is responsible for investment, Guangzhou Railway Anmao Company for construction management on behalf of the owner, and China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group for construction.

For the shared section of the main bridge, the substructure adopts "gan"-shaped (干-shaped) piers with large cantilever bent caps and central double-column piers, while the superstructure adopts 30-meter and 35-meter prestressed concrete simply supported box girders. The span over the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Intercity Railway adopts a two-span 85-meter continuous steel truss web-plate truss composite structure, with a single double-deck rotation that is the first of its kind in China and weighs approximately 29,000 tons.

Throughout the construction process, engineers first erected a support platform parallel to the railway to assemble the entire steel structure, then constructed the lower-deck ribbed slab concrete girders in sections, and then used temporary supports to assist in staged girder lowering to complete the load-bearing system conversion, and finally carried out the rotation construction. This construction technique fills a gap in China for the rotation construction of double-deck steel-concrete composite highway bridges spanning operating railways, and serves as a demonstration for subsequent bridge construction where multi-corridor shared bridge sites span operating railways.

The main bridge is adjacent to the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Intercity Railway, with a tight schedule, high safety risks, and great construction difficulty, making it a key controlling project for achieving the opening target of the third phase of the Guanfan Expressway. Compared with traditional double-deck steel truss girders, the main bridge of the double-deck bridge spanning the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Railway innovatively uses materials such as steel truss girders for the upper deck and ribbed slab concrete girders for the lower deck, which not only gives full play to the advantages of concrete's good compressive performance and saves steel, but also meets the railway department's requirement for less later maintenance and repair work.