What is this "bridge" over the Suez Canal?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 20 Jul, 2023
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This bridge appears to be a permanent installation. In Google Earth, the first evidence I can see of its construction is June 2018:
In February 2019, you can see the completed bridge out of the way of ship traffic:
It is first seen closed in August 2019:
November 2019 shows the bridge in action:
There is an entry for it in OpenStreetMap, noted as "movable bridge". The government website for the Canal has a gallery for a "floating bridge", which suggests it is some form of pontoon bridge. Using this lets us dig around a bit and it turns out that there are a number of different pontoon bridges recently established at various points on the canal:
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The El-Nasr bridge in Port Said (northern end of the canal) was opened in 2016; this article gives some engineering details and a very similar photo. Labelled on Google Maps here, and you can see it being split open to allow through passage of ships (or possibly it is in the middle of being reassembled).
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The Abanoub Gerges bridge in El Qantara was opened in 2017. Labelled on Google Maps here.
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The Ahmed el-Mansy bridge was opened in 2017 at Ismailia; this page has a photo of it being traversed by a container ship. Labelled on Google Maps here. The Google Maps image suggests they are fully rotated against the bank, while the photo in the article suggests middle sections can be removed seperately. Could be it’s worked both ways.
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The Taha Zaki Abdullah Bridge in Ismailia was opened in 2019. This is probably on Google Maps here – it’s not specifically named, though. You can see a pair of pontoon bridges pulled alongside the edges of the channels, and on the western bank, a series of individual pontoon units.
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The Ahmed Omar Shabrawy bridge is in Al Shat district in Suez governorate; opening date not clear.
This 2019 statement confirms five bridges were established. I think the last one, Ahmed Omar Shabrawy Bridge, is the one we’re seeing here; the others are too far north and can be identified separately on the maps.
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It looks like a pontoon bridge, which is in the water.
Those are often used as a temporary solution and can be taken out without leaving (many) traces when no longer needed.
They are also easier to put in than other kinds of bridges.
As the pontoons are in the water and the road surface only a bit above, it blocks all traffic on the water, so usually there is a part that can be floated away to let shipping go through. But it is not the easiest thing and mostly pontoon bridges are not kept longer than needed.
I bet that you will not find this bridge on photos of an other year, maybe not even from an other month, week or even day.
It may be that the ferry was out of use or that there were other problems which made for a need for a temporary bridge. And seeing the amount of trucks I think that is proven.
In an other answer is mentioned that this is/might be a new connection, meant to be a long term feature.
(Answer edited based on the answer by Andrew.)
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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