 150px|right thumb|300px|beijing's 5th ring road (taken in march 2003)  thumb|300px|the western 5th ring road nears the western hills in beijing (july 2004 image) beijing's 5th ring road (, china road numbering: s50 (beijing) is a ring road encircling the city about  away from the city centre. it takes the form of an expressway and is  in length. being a ring road, it has no natural start or end point, although the "0 km" mark is found near the northeastern stretch at laiguangying, at the intersection with the jingcheng expressway. the expressway ring road is a provincial-level road in beijing municipality. all of beijing's expressways, except for the tongyan expressway, are interlinked with the 5th ring road. portions of the expressway have a maximum speed limit of 90&nbsp;km/h, with the remainder imposing a speed limit of 100&nbsp;km/h. there is a universal minimum speed limit of 50&nbsp;km/h. the 4th ring road has three lanes in each direction, for a total of six lanes. ==history== the route was originally called the "1st expressway ring road", as it would take the form of an expressway, and therefore become the city's first expressway ring road. however, given the fact that the 2nd ring road, 3rd ring road and 4th ring road were in existence, re-ordering it as a ring road with a number value of 1, especially as it was outside the 4th ring road, looked odd. therefore, it was renamed the 5th ring road, after some debate. work began soon after and the first portion of the ring road opened in 2001, linking the badaling expressway with the airport expressway. further stretches of the road were soon opened. by mid-2003, half of the ring road was open, from the western end connecting the west chang'an avenue to the interchange in the southeast with the jingjintang expressway. the ring road was completed in its entirety on november 1, 2003, with the intersections with the jingshi expressway and the jingkai expressway. also completed on that same day was the xiaoyue tunnelânoticeable for being the only tunnel on any of the 5 ring roads of beijing. the 5th ring road is home to the shifeng bridge. this bridge was built and actually had to be rotated after it was built to link the two ends of the southwestern 5th ring road together. underneath the bridge ran several important rail lines that could not be interrupted while the bridge was being built, which made it impossible for the shifeng bridge to be built like a normal bridge. it was instead constru
Ring_roads_in_China Road_transport_in_Beijing