World's longest expressway tunnel

 A 22.13-kilometer highway tunnel crossing Tianshan mountains, setting a new world record by China 

The 324.7-kilometer route features the world's longest expressway tunnel, the 22.13-km Tianshan Shengli Tunnel, crossing the Tianshan Mountains. Stretching 2,500 km, the range spans central Xinjiang, dividing the region into northern and southern parts. A new section of expressway in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region opened to traffic, enhancing connectivity between northern and southern Xinjiang. It runs through a mountainous area in southwestern China, linking sections of a high-speed expressway and connecting previously hard‑to‑reach regions. Previously, crossing the Tianshan Mountains involved navigating winding roads, reaching altitudes above 4,000 meters and facing winter closures or long detours. Now, with the tunnel, the crossing takes just 20 minutes. The workers’ headlights cut thin white circles through the rock dust, somewhere under the mountains of southern China. It’s the middle of the night, but under here, time runs on the rhythm of drills, alarms, and the low murmur of walkie‑talkies. A siren sounds, the last layer of rock gives way, and suddenly the tunnel is no longer two blind ends – it’s one long, continuous line of asphalt waiting to be born. Everyone stops for a second, faces smeared with mud and sweat, and stares into the dark distance. The number flashes in everyone’s mind: 22.13 kilometers. The longest highway tunnel on Earth has just been connected. No one says it out loud, but everyone is thinking the same thing.

It has been designed with strict safety features: ventilation systems, emergency exits, cameras and constant monitoring to manage accidents or fires. At typical highway speeds, drivers spend around 12 to 15 minutes inside, depending on traffic and speed limits. The expressway links Urumqi, the regional capital, to Yuli county in the Bayingolin Mongolian autonomous prefecture, cutting the travel time from Urumqi to Korla from seven hours to three and a half. Currently, public vehicles, except medium and heavy-duty trucks, are allowed to use the route. Construction began in April 2020, with a total investment of 46.7 billion yuan ($6.66 billion). China’s new 22.13‑kilometer highway tunnel doesn’t just break a record. It literally redraws what “far away” means in a mountainous region. Dug through the rugged terrain of Guizhou province, this giant passage is part of a high-speed road link designed to cut hours off journeys which used to follow slow, dangerous mountain roads. Until now, Norway’s Lærdal Tunnel held the crown for the world’s longest road tunnel at 24.5 km's, but that’s a single-tube tunnel with a different design and context. China’s new project is focused on expressway traffic, built to handle dense flows of cars and trucks that never really stop. Imagine driving from one city to another and spending a full quarter of an hour in pure tunnel, headlights carving a path through perfectly lit concrete.

Miao Baodong, an engineer with China Communications Construction Co, which built the expressway, noted that the tunnel served as a decisive part of the project. It was built at an altitude of nearly 3,000 meters, where temperatures can drop to as low as minus 42 C, with the area characterized by high seismic activity and complex fault zones. Its deepest point plunges 1,112 meters beneath the mountain ridge, while the longest shaft descends more than 700 meters, piercing into the heart of the range. The latter sets a world record. Behind this massive corridor lies a simple national obsession: connect every corner of the country, no matter how wild the terrain. Mountains, rivers, deep valleys, nothing is supposed to be a permanent obstacle anymore. Chinese planners have been building highways like a spider web, and every new tunnel allows one more perfectly straight line to slice through what once forced endless detours. The 22.13‑kilometer tunnel is just the latest proof that geology is starting to lose the battle to engineering. It’s also a sign of how infrastructure has become one of China’s sharpest tools for growth and influence. From the outside, a highway tunnel entrance always looks clean, almost simple: a concrete arch, some signs, a ceiling full of LEDs. The chaos is on the inside, where the work actually happened. On this Chinese mega‑site, teams spent years digging from both ends, calculating angles with a precision which left virtually no room for error. They used enormous tunnel boring machines where they could, then switched to controlled blasting and old‑school drilling in tougher rock. The real trick was keeping the whole thing straight, safe and ventilated while km's of mountain weighed down from above.

Miao said construction work integrated various cutting-edge technologies and innovative achievements in ultra-long tunnel surveying and design, construction techniques, intelligent solutions and safety, providing a reference for similar projects worldwide. Li Yafei, deputy director of the construction management office of Xinjiang's transport department, said the expressway adjoins domestic routes such as the G7 Beijing-Urumqi Expressway and G30 Expressway connecting Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, with Xinjiang's Horgos, while further linking major arteries such as the New Eurasian Land Bridge and the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor. Engineers on the project talk about the rock as if it were a living thing. Some layers are stable and dry, others crack, crumble or suddenly spring leaks of pressurized water. On long tunnels like this, one bad geological surprise can delay work for months and cost millions. So they scan, probe, inject concrete, add steel arches and build escape passages at regular intervals. One expert compared the process to performing “open-heart surgery on a mountain that keeps moving”. We’ve all been there, that moment when something you thought was solid starts shifting under your feet. Once the tunnel is hollowed out, the next battle starts: turning a raw cavern into a safe, modern highway. Ventilation shafts are drilled to push out exhaust fumes, fireproof materials are installed, cameras and sensors go in every few dozen meters. There are evacuation galleries, cross‑passages and high‑tech monitoring rooms where staff can follow every truck and car on huge screens. Let’s be honest, nobody really thinks about all this when they drive through a tunnel. Yet every meter of that Chinese record‑breaker is layered with technology designed for the worst day, not the best one.

The expressway, a key component of Xinjiang's highway network, links the Urumqi, Kashgar and Horgos areas of the China (Xinjiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone, reducing logistics costs and boosting resource exchanges between northern and southern Xinjiang. It will accelerate the flow of energy, manufactures and agricultural products across the region. If there’s one thing Chinese authorities have mastered, it’s treating infrastructure as a long-term bet. A tunnel like this doesn’t pay off in a year or two. It changes trade flows, land prices and daily routines along its route for decades. Farmers get faster access to city markets, factories can ship goods more reliably, and small towns suddenly sit next to a national artery instead of at the end of a gravel road. 22.13‑km tube of concrete is basically a silent economic engine running under the mountains. Somewhere in a few months, a truck driver will roll into this tunnel for the first time before dawn. He’ll switch on the radio, sip lukewarm tea from a thermos, and slip under the mountain almost without noticing. For him, the tunnel is not a world record. It’s just the fastest way to deliver fruit, car parts, or furniture to a distant city before the day gets too hot. That quiet, everyday moment is where this giant project truly becomes real. For the rest of the world, this new 22.13‑kilometer corridor raises a bigger question. Are we stepping into an era where landscapes no longer dictate our routes, where valleys, seas and cliffs become mere details on an engineer’s sketch? Or are we drifting into a race for spectacle, where the length of a tunnel counts more than the life it transforms around it? Somewhere between those two extremes is the space where responsible infrastructure lives.

Nurmanat Abdukader, 57, a retired doctor from Pishan county, Hotan prefecture, came to Urumqi for medical treatment, and after recovering, waited a few days until the expressway opened to be among the first to travel on it. He said the expressway has shortened his journey home to a single day, saving him from an overnight stop. China’s latest tunnel record will certainly feed headlines. But its deeper story is quieter: human patience, geological stubbornness, political ambition, daily routines stitched together across mountains. The next time you drive into a tunnel and feel that small shiver of entering a different world, think of the people who decided that the straight line through the rock was worth years of risk and noise. And then ask yourself what kind of world we’re carving, one long, glowing tunnel at a time. There’s also a political message woven into the asphalt. China loves record‑breaking projects because they speak a universal language: size, speed, ambition. For citizens, they feed a sense of pride and progress. For international observers, they showcase Chinese engineering and construction companies which are already active across Asia, Africa and Latin America. The risk, of course, is the temptation to build fast and big without always asking whether every project really serves local people first. The world is starting to watch not just how high China can build, but how wisely.

Zhu Genshen, an engineer with China Communications Construction Co, said a 116-km section of the expressway passes through an area rich in biodiversity, with a notable concentration of protected wildlife. Along this stretch, 17 tunnels, including the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel, and 36 extra-large and large bridges have been constructed, taking up nearly 60% of this section and facilitating wildlife passages. The expressway provides underpasses for local herders and their livestock. “Mega‑tunnels like this one are a glimpse of the future of mobility,” says a Beijing‑based transport planner. “The real question isn’t whether we can do them, it’s how we combine them with greener transport, safer standards, and communities that actually want them.” Major achievements include:-

Technological leap: advanced boring machines, monitoring systems, and safety design.

Strategic location: connecting isolated regions to national high-speed road networks.

Record‑breaking length: a new benchmark for highway tunnels worldwide.

Economic effect: faster logistics, more tourism, new business corridors.

Global signal: a clear statement that *China is not slowing down its infrastructure push*.

China is trying to link remote regions, support trade, and showcase *its engineering capabilities* while sustaining economic growth. Part of the expressway also crosses water-source protection zones and several national forest parks, for which dedicated environmentally friendly measures have been implemented. And it's very likely, China and other countries with tough terrain are planning new mega‑projects which could challenge current records in the next decade.