There is a new world record set, and it belongs to Kuwait. They have built the world’s longest bridge. The construction of the Sheikh Ahmad Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Bridge started in 2013 and is assumed to be finished in January of 2020. 

The bridge is 159,121 feet long. That’s 48.5 kilometers or 30 miles long. It is actually made up of two separate parts called the Main Link and the Duha Link.

The idea of the bridge was to cross the Bay of Kuwait in order to connect Kuwait City to Subiya, an island in south Kuwait. Without the bridge, it takes  three and a half hours to get to the island, but now it takes just thirty minutes.  According to architects, the bridge cuts off a massive amount of land driving. “The causeway will shorten the distance between the capital and Subiyah from 104km to 37.5km” according to the Kuwaiti State Agency.

The bridge can also take drivers to the Khairan area, which is a span of desert basically.

The bridge is expected to help transportation in Kuwait in a significant way. It affects where people can live and commute to work. For example, prior to the bridge’s construction, people couldn’t live in the city and work in the Subiya, but now they can.

The bridge is so long that there are two stops along it.  These are actually islands in the middle of the bridge that can be either a destination or just a pit stop. At each of these islands there is a food court with popular chains like Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and McDonald’s. Both islands also have resorts belonging to the Khiran Resorts, which is the company that owns fourteen percent of houses on the Kuwaiti islands.

The bridge’s most important destination is Silk City–a new $100 billion city being built.  It will be about 20 minutes away from downtown Kuwait City and  will be one of the most expensive cities in the world after New York City.

In addition to being the longest bridge in the world, it will also be the most expensive bridge, costing more than the Golden Gate Bridge. The final cost to the bridge is 3.6 billion dollars.

The bridge is  named after Sheikh Jaber Al-Sabah ,who reigned during the Gulf War.