Project Overview

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The Suhua Highway is part of Taiwan Provincial Highway No. 9 and travels through very mountainous and steep terrain alongside and near to the northeastern coast of Taiwan. The highway was often subject to serious or deadly landslides that constantly required repair work all year round, making it necessary to provide a more reliable, convenient and safer transport link for its users.

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CECI began the feasibility study, planning and design of priority sections for making improvements to the Suhua Highway back in early 2009 which included the addition of 8 tunnels and 13 bridges.

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Originally having a length of approximately 77 kilometers, a plan was set in place to realign the highway route so that it would bypass the most dangerous areas and instead build three new sections having a combined length of 38.8 kilometers to reduce the overall length of the Suhua Highway to 53 kilometers and at the same time reduce the travel time by 60 minutes. 

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The total length of the new tunnel works for these new sections is approximately 23.42 kilometers and includes the following tunnels built by drilling and blasting or the New Austrian Tunneling Method (NATM):

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• Suao Tunnel: twin tube single lane tunnels having a length of 240m.

• Tungao Tunnel: twin tube single lane tunnels having a length of 3320m

• Tungyeh Tunnel: twin tube single lane tunnels having a length of 200m.

• Wuta Tunnel: twin tube single lane tunnels having a length of 460m.

• Guanyin Tunnel: twin tube single lane tunnels having a length of 7950m. 

• Gufeng Tunnel: twin tube single lane tunnels having a length of 4650m.

• Chungren Tunnel: twin tube single lane tunnels having a length of 3790m.

• Renshui Tunnel: twin tube two-lane tunnels having a length of 2890m.

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The above mentioned Guanyin and Gufeng Tunnels are actually part of a magnificent 12.6km tunnel system which is interlinked by unique twin tube 60m long cylindrical frame shaped bridges as pictured below.