On April 22nd, the reporters from Huaihua Daily visited the four urban construction sites of the pedestrian overpasses. Afterwards they found that bridge piers on both sides of the sidewalks had basically been built, sewer pipelines set up and ground leveling mostly completed. The overpasses could be functional after the hoisting of main beams and the pavement of bridge decks.

For years, many schools and main-road intersections in Huaihua have been confronted with serious traffic congestion. For instance, there are already heavy traffics during the morning and evening rush hours at the intersection of Hongxing Road and Tianxing Road. What makes things worse is that the nearby four primary and secondary schools with a population of more than ten thousand students（namely Huaihua No. 5 Middle School, Hongxing Road Primary School, Tie'er Middle School, and Tie'er Primary School ) make crossing roads much more risky for pedestrians. During such periods, traffic police are required to stand at the traffic light intersections to maintain order and escort students.

To address this issue, Huaihua city launched a project to build four new pedestrian passages in 2020 ensuing the completion of the pedestrian overpass across Wushui Road. Given the fact that these passages are located near Hongyu Primary School and Hongxing Road Primary School respectively, the project went through several modifications( building-up underground passages and constructing "X"-shaped overpass at the crossroads) and thus yielded a detailed final plan of setting up four "I"-shaped pedestrian overpasses across the streets. In May 2024, the gardening department of the municipal government transplanted in advance 48 large roadside trees in sections such as Shuntian South Road and Hongxing South Road in a bid to make room for and facilitate the construction.

In November 2024, the construction officially kicked off.

Yang Li is a staff member with the Infrastructure Office at the Huaihua Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau. According to him, the main steel beams of the overpasses have been processed and the construction of the main structure of the bridge frames and supporting facilities can be completed in about 20 days if funds are in place timely.

(Translated by Dong Yue)