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World’s Longest Bridge Set to Open in Kuwait Soon

The Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmed causeway project is nearly complete and is set to open this coming April. Once it opens the bridge will be the world’s longest with a total span of 48.53km [Source].

Going by the drone footage in the two videos here, the drive will be very scenic over the Kuwaiti bay and take around 35 minutes from one end to the other. There isn’t anything on the other side to see yet but at least the road isn’t broken and full of potholes and little rocks flying around like every other road in Kuwait at the moment.

55 replies on “World’s Longest Bridge Set to Open in Kuwait Soon”

hi Mark
I saw u at Amman round about yesterday 7.15pm .was so excited to see u and wanted to shout and wave. but a cop car was behind me so did not want any issues 🙁 so waving and giving shoutout here now 🙂 hey buddy…… waaatssssss aaaapppppp \m/

That cop took my license and car registration because i was parked on the side of the road waiting for the kebab guy to come out with my order. He wanted to impound the car! I’ve seen people run red lights and speed down the emergency lane and not even get stopped yet he wanted to impound my car because I wanted some kebab. Giving me a ticket I understand but why the drama?

If you were in a posh car as an expat then definitely he would want to, you know the drill come on 🙂

*Posh = any car above 6 grand and has no installments at the registration.

I hope you were not parked on the ‘side’ of the road at the round about itself.. if so then I’m happy the traffic police is taking action. People parking there is such a nuisance and more than that, dangerous.
Agree that it could just have been a fine/ ticket

for me the tastiest kebab in entire Kuwait is the one in reggai next to 5th ring, right side to the juice shop, i forgot the name of the shop but whenever i feel like eating kebab i head straight to this place, the miannase they give omg tasty

Why when I look at the bridge all I can imagine is traffic puked up due to major accidents or people screaming down the shoulders?!? 🤣

Did you just googled world longest bridge?

Looks like you TL;DR, the Chinese one segment over sea is only 30K.

So maybe the title of this post should be “world longest bridge over seawater”

Yeah this was the first time I heard that it was the longest but if you google longest bridge in the world kuwait you’ll find a bunch of other sources who state it as well.

I googled [longest in the world] and China conquered all top results with 165KM long bridge. I googled [Longest in the world kuwait] and many of regional websites referred that it’s the longest in the world.

Obviously, these sources just don’t bother to a little research before they feature the article on their platform.

Just wonder how long it will before the first accident.
Then how long before a car ends up in the water.

I guess 24 hours for first accident and 60 days before the first water landing…

“There isn’t anything on the other side”

Hey Mark, I think you’re confused. The bridge in the videos is only the smaller one from Doha (Entertainment City) to Shuwaikh – which I don’t think looks like 48km at all.

The longer one (and possibly longest?) is the one from Shuwaikh to Subbiya in North Kuwait (Silk City). Maybe this is the bridge that will be ready in April this year.

I worked on that bridge for a while, and the info presented may have been misunderstood.

Total span of the bridge from end to end is about 36km, with only about 26km crossing over the sea. It will be the 4th longest bridge in the world when it is opened. The bridge crosses over two artificial islands 300,000 sq m each, so that means yes there WILL be a u-tun. There are a total of 500 cameras on that bridge, mix of lane monitoring, emergency lane and shoulder monitoring, speed cameras, point to point cameras etc, should be one of the most sophisticated forms of electrical and transportation monitoring systems in the region. The bridge will officially will be open for civilian use by summer 2019

Maybe my info is old though

Its great that it will have u-turns. Its unfortunate that it will have that many cameras. I hope to god the limit is 140km/h as was rumored.

Yes, they are not all speed cameras, and no the speed limit is still 120 like most major highways here. It takes approx 20 minutes to cross the whole bridge at this speed, why do you need to go faster than that? just enjoy the chill ride to the other side that is very much empty.

Also, the video attached is actually showing the DOHA link part of this project. This project has two legs, 12km bridge to Doha, and 36 km bridge to subiya. Which is why the article stated it is 48.5 km long. That span of 48km isnt one stretch, the 12km and 36km bridges are connected by an interchange at Shuwaikh Port.

Si, my bad, video talks about both bridges. The two projects were very much separate,l started at very different times, and so that is why I had a hard time thinking of them as one. As a single span though it still is only the 4th longest bridge in the world.

Of course not! Who dares to research this thing! The EPA is absolute shit and KISR isn’t into environmental research.

So now your wondering on what basis I made that statement: Any bridge that is built over a body of water will cause environmental damage due to the nature of its construction. Here are some examples:
-The noise and vibration can be damaging to some marine animals (some fish die from the shock) and will definitely drive any marine animal away.
-Any leakage of any chemical or heavy duty construction material is going to sink to the ocean floor and just pollute (if anybody thinks no accidental leakage happened during the entire project… you are naive)
-Tide dynamics for the “Jown” will be effected cause this bridge goes over all of it. “Jown” (جون) the body of water which is partly inside Kuwait.
-Dredging and inserting the pillars for each support will cause extreme sediment deposition, especially with long bridge that requires strong supports. Sediment deposition has an extreme effect on the habitat of many marine creatures, and on breeding grounds for some fish (And like many of the effects this one is permanent). So imagine this happening at every pillar inserted.

This are the effects that came to my head at this moment, there are many many more.

Ipsom may be right unfortunately. The environmental studies on this bridge are bogus, the study was finalized after construction began. The width of concrete going into the sea, amounts to about 5% the distance of the bay, every 40-60 meters you have a few giant 3 meter diameter concrete columns, and with the tide dynamics that Ipson mentioned, the sediment deposits around that area may be affected, who knows what kind of effects we may see in around 50-100 years. This bay is a very sensitive breeding ground for lots of the creatures that populate the Indian ocean, I hope we dont see irreversible damage. As Ipsom says, inserting the underground piles can have an effect on life there too, some of the piles go as deep as 70 meters underground. All for a bridge that goes no where, built WITHOUT actually doing a traffic study on the bridge and the traffic that could be traveling north, get ready for mega traffic jams around those islands in about 10-20 years LOL. The construction is cool and all, we got to see things we never saw in Kuwait before while constructing this bridge. It is sad to say however, that a few people lost their lives while working on this project (at least one employee of Hyundai that I am aware of died during a rainstorm, and a separate incident took the lives of two Kuwaiti engineers from the MPW, taking the Subiya highway on a road trip from Shuwaikh to Subiya to go check on the bridge construction / environmental works happening in the north, got hit by a random KOC truck using an illegal exit from the desert onto the highway). This bridge is a burden on the environment, the economy, and the families of the engineers involved.

I didn’t even know they could go down to 70 m that’s insane.
I also didn’t 3 people lost their lives, wow so sad.

I mean really Jumanji the amount frustration I have from this project… it really just makes me sad that we have these kind of people who are just plain unsuited for this kind road infrastructure planning

It is a beautiful bridge, cannot deny saying that, but as you said, frustrating that this is the course that was decided. Expanding the current Subiya road into a double deck would have been so much easier and probably more cost effective.

The Sheikh Jaber causeway will be the longest bridge over water(aggregate of the Subiya and the Doha arms). It will take over from the recently opened Hongkong – Macau bridge.
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-bridge-over-water-(aggregate-length)

This Wikipedia link lists the longest bridges in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_bridges
It lists the two arms of the Sheikh Jaber causeway separately in the under construction category.
Currently, the majority of the top 10 longest bridges in the world of any type are the high-speed rail viaducts in China.
Once completed, the 36km Shuwaikh to Subiya arm of the causeway will rank at #11, until the other 4 longer bridges under construction push it further down the list.

Also, if the Qatar-Bahrain friendship bridge were to materialise in the future, it would be longer at 40km.

So Mark did the cop return your License and Registration or did he give you a pass for a plate of kebab 😉

Yeah I got everything bag, honestly wasn’t worried about getting car impounded or a fine, just didn’t want him to take my license cuz I need it this weekend

Do you still have your Lotus? Are there many in Kuwait? I parked next to a black convertible Lotus by Jabriya Sultan center before Winter holiday – just wondered if it was yours.

Damn, what a wasted opportunity… they could have put a protected bike lane on this project. That would have been an amazing ride.

I kinda see where you’re coming from but it’s a pretty long bridge out in the middle of nowhere, so how many cyclists would use it? They also would have to make a double lane probably somewhere in the middle of the bridge or else you’ll have people start riding, get half way and then realize they’re tired and ride back against the flow of cyclist. So the lane has to be big enough to cater to cyclist traveling both ways. Too costly and not worth it for just the 5 people who’ll eventually cycle on the bridge.

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