HEIHE, China, September 26. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia and the People's Republic of China have founded a joint company to implement a project for the construction of a bridge across Amur River (or Heilong Jiang in Chinese) in the area of the cities of Blagoveshchensk (Amur Region) and Heihe (Chinese province of Heilongjiang), with an amount of needed investments being not determined so far, Heihe Mayor Zhang Enliang told ITAR-TASS on Friday. The construction is to be started in one year's time.

Zhang Enliang pointed out, "We have founded a joint company which will control the process of building the bridge. The newly founded Sino-Russian joint entity will make it possible to start designing the facility, work out standards for the new bridge and determine an amount of investments required for implementing the project". He did not mention a name of the company or who acted as a co-founder on the Russian side.

Earlier, the amount of investments from the Chinese side was estimated at about $220 million, in 2008 prices. Under an interstate agreement, signed in 1995, it is planned to build an automobile bridge and a railway one across the Amur stage-by-stage. A motorway bridge will be the first to be built: its construction is to begin in summer 2015.

The bridge over the Amur river will be more than one kilometer long and 15 meters wide. Traffic will be a two-lane one. Oncoming traffic will be separated by a safety zone in the middle of the bridge. There will be sidewalks on both sides.