To enhance the traffic capacity and safety resilience of the Beijing Capital Airport Expressway, the city will initiate a capacity expansion and upgrade project starting at 11:00 PM on August 21, 2026. Construction will be concentrated during the daily window from 11:00 PM to 5:00 AM the following morning, with completion expected by the end of December. The project will optimize lane widths and eliminate a bottleneck where the expressway crosses the Northeast Ring suburban railway line, thereby improving overall traffic flow.

Stretching 18.4 kilometers from the East Third Ring Road in the south to the Capital Airport in the north, this expressway serves as a vital gateway linking the city center with the airport and acts as a key showcase for the capital's image. Facing continuously rising urban traffic demands, the existing road has revealed significant shortcomings in capacity, landscape aesthetics, smart technology integration, and infrastructure condition, necessitating a systematic upgrade.

This renovation project is guided by principles of systematic design, meticulous construction, and intelligent management. It will coordinate upgrades across three core areas: road quality, landscape appearance, and smart transportation, aiming for a comprehensive enhancement of the expressway's service level. The work will focus on improving traffic efficiency and updating infrastructure by optimizing lane widths and removing the bottleneck at the Northeast Ring Railway crossing. It also includes repairing 720,000 square meters of main road surface, replacing 86,000 linear meters of curbstones, removing 19,000 linear meters of hazardous cable pipelines, and refurbishing 89,000 linear meters of crash barriers to boost both traffic quality and safety resilience.

For landscape improvement, the project aims to create an ecological corridor aligned with the capital's garden city initiative. It will coordinate the integrated enhancement of green spaces both within and outside the road boundary, adding seasonal plants to build a multi-layered, seasonally diverse landscape. Furthermore, the color scheme of bridges and poles along the route will be unified, traffic sign poles will be consolidated, and the visual corridor for drivers will be cleared, creating a coherent, seasonally distinct, and dignified visual experience.

On the smart transportation front, a proactive intelligent management system will be established. Leveraging Beijing's "dual-intelligence" city development, a smart corridor for the Capital Airport Expressway will be built, centered on road network connectivity and data sharing. The project will upgrade three major electromechanical systems: surveillance, communication, and toll collection. It will expand the power supply capacity of roadside box transformers and install 83 smart sensing points to form a comprehensive, tiered sensing network. Additionally, 51 traffic management and communication facilities will be optimized to create an integrated "detection-decision-response" emergency command chain, shifting traffic management from reactive handling to proactive prediction and precise control, thereby improving the efficiency of handling incidents like accidents and congestion.

To minimize disruption to airport commuters and residents in the northeastern part of the city, the construction will employ meticulous full-process management. Measures include staggered work schedules, phased traffic diversions, and remote guidance to ensure stable and orderly road network operation. The main construction hours will be from 11:00 PM to 5:00 AM daily. During standard work phases, the "occupy three, leave one" pattern will be used, where three of the four lanes are closed for work while one lane remains open for traffic. Normal traffic flow will be restored during the day. To ensure quality during asphalt paving and bridge deck renovation, short-term full-road closures may be necessary, with accompanying detour plans to guide transit vehicles to service roads and nearby expressways, minimizing the impact on regular traffic.

During the construction period, some ramps at the Siyuan Bridge interchange area will be fully closed for three weekends: August 29-30, September 5-6, and September 12-13. The Tianzhu Toll Station will be under construction for 50 days, divided into four phases (August 21 to October 9), using a zonal continuous work model where 4-5 of the 15 lanes will be occupied at a time. Throughout the project, real-time travel information will be disseminated via road message signs, navigation apps, traffic radio, and remote warning signs, guiding the public to plan their routes in advance and use detours. For specific detours, vehicles heading towards the city center can use Tianbei Road to access Jingmi Road or Jingmi Expressway. Vehicles heading to the airport have three recommended routes: first, via Jingmi Road or Jingmi Expressway, then Tianbei Road and Cargo Road; second, via Jingmi Road or Jingmi Expressway to Jingping Expressway, then transfer to Airport Second Expressway, continuing via Gangshan Road and Airport West Road; third, via Jingmi Road to the Airport Service Road, then via Airport West Road. Traffic authorities remind the public to check real-time traffic conditions and plan their travel times and routes accordingly when commuting to or from the Capital Airport.