The start of things to come: Two cars edge through the toll gates that will raise revenue to maintain the £1billion bridge

That structure features two bridges running side by side and is 23.87 miles long.

The three-way Qingdao Haiwan bridge is 174 times longer than London 's Tower Bridge , spanning the River Thames, but cuts only 19 miles off the drive from Qingdao to Huangdao.

Two separate groups of workers have been building it from different ends of the structure since 2006.
After linking the two ends of the bridge on December 22, one engineer said: 'The computer models and calculations are all very well but you can't relax until the two sides are bolted together.

The long road home: The two roads which run alongside each other wind across The Jiaozhou Bay

'Even a few centimetres out would have been a disaster.'

The engineering feat will only hold the record as the longest sea bridge for a few years - it will be beaten by another Chinese bridge in the next decade.

Last December officials announced workers had begun constructing a bridge to link southern Guangdong province with Hong Kong and Macau .

Set to be completed in 2016, officials said the £6.5billion bridge will span nearly 30 miles.

It will be designed to cope with earthquakes up to magnitude 8.0, strong typhoons and the impact of a 300,000 tonne vessel.

But both structures will still be dwarfed by the longest bridge in the world, also in China .

The Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge is an astonishing 102 miles in length.

Impressive: Testing on the bridge was completed on Monday and it is expected to be opened to traffic for the first time today