Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Wednesday commissioned a suspension bridge over the Nile endorsed as the world’s widest, one of a series of military-led mega-projects formulated to foster infrastructure and provide jobs.
The bridge, which crosses the Nile just north of central Cairo, is a cogent sync in a highway stretching from the Red Sea in the east to Egypt’s north-western Mediterranean coast, and it’s meant to help delineate stuffing in the capital.
Traffic ground to a halt in parts of central Cairo on Wednesday morning as El-Sisi travelled to open the bridge with ministers and military generals.
At its widest, the bridge has six traffic lanes in each direction and measures 67.3 meters (222 feet) across.
A regional director for the Guinness Book of World Records present at the opening said that makes it the world’s widest suspension bridge.
According to a presentation given at the formal commissioning, around one million cubic meters of concrete as well as 1,400 km (2,268 miles) of steel wire for 160 suspension cables were used in its construction.
The bridge crosses the Nile’s Warraq Island, which has an estimated 100,000 inhabitants, some of whom have protested against planned destruction on the island and plans to develop it into a “modern residential community.”
On an inspection visit to the suspension bridge last month, El-Sisi denied reports stating that the island could be sold to investors and said the state could not forcefully evict residents.
Together with this endorsed record breaking project, other unquantifiable projects commissioned under the central Cairo include an expansion of the Suez Canal, completed in 2015, and the building of a new capital in the desert east of Cairo, currently under construction.