The Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport has announced that the upgrade and expansion project for the Beijing Airport Expressway will officially commence at 11:00 PM on August 21. The project is expected to be completed by the end of December. This initiative aims to enhance the expressway's traffic capacity, strengthen road safety resilience, and comprehensively improve transportation service levels.

Drawing on the experience of the Fourth Ring Road renovation, the project will upgrade the road's traffic capacity, landscape quality, and intelligent operation levels. The project will promote three major upgrades for the Beijing Airport Expressway.

The Beijing Airport Expressway runs from the East Third Ring Road in the south to the Beijing Capital International Airport in the north, with a main line spanning 18.4 kilometers. It serves as a vital gateway connecting the city's core area to the airport and is a key window showcasing the capital's image. As urban traffic demand continues to grow, the current road has shown significant deficiencies in traffic capacity, landscape aesthetics, smart technology, and facility condition, making a systemic upgrade necessary.

The upgrade project is built on the principles of "safe and smooth traffic, four-season greenery, and digital empowerment." It is supported by a "departmental coordination, integrated advancement" working mechanism and standards of "systematic design, refined construction, and intelligent management." The project will coordinate and advance the integrated and systematic upgrade of three dimensions: road quality, landscape appearance, and smart transportation, comprehensively improving the road's comprehensive service level.

Regarding road quality, the project will strengthen the foundation for safe road travel. It focuses on improving traffic efficiency and updating infrastructure by optimizing lane widths and removing bottlenecks at the crossing point with the Northeastern Ring suburban railway. The project will also repair 720,000 square meters of main road pavement, replace 86,000 linear meters of curbstones, eliminate 19,000 linear meters of cable pipelines, and refurbish 89,000 linear meters of crash barriers, enhancing overall travel quality and safety resilience.

For landscape improvement, the project aims to create an ecological corridor for a garden city. Aligned with the requirements of building a garden city for the capital, the project will coordinate the integrated upgrade of green spaces both inside and outside the road area. It will feature seasonal greenery to create a multi-seasonal, multi-layered ecological landscape. This includes upgrading 221,000 square meters of greenery, adding 3,114 elevated flower boxes, and using a combination of climbing roses and landscape flower boxes in the central median. Greenery and color enhancement will be implemented for green spaces inside and outside the protective net, supported by an intelligent irrigation system to achieve a "flowers in spring, scenery in autumn, and distinctive landscapes in all seasons" greening effect. Additionally, the color scheme of bridges and poles along the route will be unified, traffic sign poles will be consolidated, and driving sightlines will be cleared, creating a continuous, distinct, and dignified visual corridor.

In the realm of smart transportation, the project will establish an active intelligent management and control system. Leveraging the city's "dual-intelligence" city construction, the project focuses on "road network interconnection and data sharing" to build a smart corridor along the Beijing Airport Expressway. It will upgrade the three major electromechanical systems—monitoring, communication, and toll collection—expand the power supply capacity of roadside box transformers, and deploy 83 smart sensing points to form a full-coverage, hierarchical sensing network. The project will also optimize 51 traffic management and communication facilities, creating an integrated emergency command and dispatch chain from "sensing-decision-action." This will shift highway traffic management from passive response to active prediction and precise control, effectively improving the efficiency of handling incidents such as accidents and congestion.

To minimize the impact on commuters traveling to and from the airport and residents in the northeastern part of the city, the project will implement a full-process, refined construction management approach. Measures include staggered work hours, phased traffic diversions, and remote guidance to ensure smooth and orderly traffic flow. Construction will primarily be scheduled from 11:00 PM to 5:00 AM daily. During routine construction, three lanes will be occupied while one lane remains open for traffic, with traffic restored during the day. To ensure construction quality, short-term full-road closures will be implemented during asphalt concrete paving and bridge deck overlay. Simultaneously, supporting detour guidance plans will be introduced to divert through traffic to auxiliary roads and surrounding expressways, minimizing the impact on social traffic.

During construction, some bridges in the Siyuan Bridge area will be fully closed for ramp work on three weekends (August 29-30, September 5-6, and September 12-13). The Tianzhu Toll Station will use a phased, continuous construction model over 50 days (August 21 to October 9), with 4-5 of the 15 lanes occupied at a time. Throughout the construction period, travel information, including construction sections, lane occupancy times, and detour routes, will be disseminated in real-time via road information screens, navigation platforms, traffic radio, and remote signage. This will help guide the public to plan their routes in advance and take detours.

For specific detour routes, vehicles heading into the city can take Tianbei Road to Jingmi Road or Jingmi Expressway. For vehicles heading to the airport, three detour options are available: First, take Jingmi Road or Jingmi Expressway, then Tianbei Road, and Huoyun Road to reach the airport. Second, take Jingmi Road or Jingmi Expressway to Jingping Expressway, then transfer to the Second Airport Expressway, and proceed via Gangshan Road and Jichang West Road to the airport. Third, take Jingmi Road to the Airport Auxiliary Road, then via Jichang West Road to the airport. The Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport reminds the public to check real-time traffic conditions and plan their travel time and routes accordingly when traveling to and from the airport or the northeastern Chaoyang area.