Travelling from Hong Kong to Macao can be a drag. Even if everything goes according to plan, the ferry crossing should last 55 minutes, but in reality it often takes way more than hour, depending on the weather and travelling conditions. For those making their way on the popular journey from Hong Kong International to Zhuhai; the route can take up to four hours.

However that is all about to change as today saw the opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge – the planet’s biggest bridge, which slashes the travel time between HK International to Zuhai down to a remarkable 45 minutes.

https://youtu.be/guvjO8EXPCc

Instantly, a marvel of modern engineering the 35-mile long bridge (20 times the length of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge) was designed as a way to not just make travelling between the cities more convenient, but to also spur regional tourism in the Greater Bay Area of southern China – opening up access to major cities like Guangdong and Shenzhen.

The bridge, which cost an astonishing USD 2.27 billion, is the first major combined road and tunnel sea-crossing in the Greater Bay Area, spanning the sea from an artificial island near Hong Kong International Airport to Macao and the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai. On top of its remarkable length the bridge also contains enough steel to build 60 Eiffel Towers and is designed to last 120 years, which is approximately two decades longer than the lifespan of most major cross-sea bridges.

The Chinese government expects the epic construction to immediately establish itself as iconic landmark, which considering some of the statistics involved and that it was named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World two years prior to completion, by the Guardian newspaper back in 2015, looks like a safe bet.